How can I prevent gui freezing in wxpython?

Question

[PROBLEM] If I click on a button that triggers a function then gui will freeze until the function concludes.

[CODE]

import wx
app = wx.App(redirect=False)
top = wx.Frame(None)
top.Maximize(True) # Set to maximize the application
sizer = wx.GridBagSizer()

def testFunction(event):
    import pyautogui
    import time
    pyautogui.FAILSAFE = False
    for i in range(2):
            pyautogui.hotkey('win','r')
            time.sleep (0.5)
            pyautogui.typewrite('cmd.exe')
            time.sleep (0.5)
            pyautogui.hotkey('enter')
            time.sleep (0.5)
            time.sleep (3)


addButton = wx.Button( top, -1, "Start", style=wx.BU_EXACTFIT )
sizer.Add(addButton, (6, 8), (2, 14), wx.EXPAND)
top.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, testFunction, addButton)
top.Sizer = sizer
top.Sizer.Fit(top)
top.Show()
app.MainLoop()

[CURRENT] The gui freezes until the function ends.

[DESIRED] The gui should not freeze. Note: I think that is related to threads but I cannot quite grasp this concept.

Answer 1

Well, this worked for me:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import wx
app = wx.App(redirect=False)
top = wx.Frame(None)
top.Maximize(False) # Set to maximize the application
sizer = wx.GridBagSizer()

def testFunction(event):
    import time
    for i in range(2):
        print ('win','r')
        time.sleep (0.5)
        print ('cmd.exe')
        time.sleep (0.5)
        print ('enter')
        time.sleep (0.5)
        print 'sleep'
        time.sleep (3)
        print u"Iteración %d".format(i+1)

def thread_start(event):
    import threading
    th = threading.Thread(target=testFunction, args=(event,))
    th.start()



addButton = wx.Button( top, -1, "Start", style=wx.BU_EXACTFIT )
sizer.Add(addButton, (6, 8), (2, 14), wx.EXPAND)
# top.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, testFunction, addButton)
top.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, thread_start, addButton)
top.Sizer = sizer
top.Sizer.Fit(top)
top.Show()
app.MainLoop()

You have a non-blicking gui. You could start with that and add input variables (like getting and identification to your thread so you can tell which thread is being called).

I removed the py2autogui library because I don't have it installed (and isn't necessary to the example).