Including Icon In Tkinter Window When Made In To An Executable

Question

I'm using Python 3.11 and I've made a Markdown reader program.

I've put an icon on a Tkinter window using the iconbitmap thing and when I run the Python file it all works well.

However, when I ran it as an executable (made using cxfreeze) and opened a markdown file it returned this error to me:

It looks like it can't invoke the iconbitmap thing or it can't access icon.ico.

Here's my code:

import tkinter as tk
import tkinter.filedialog as FileDialog
from tkhtmlview import HTMLLabel
import markdown
import sys
import os

dir_name = os.path.dirname(__file__)
dir_name = dir_name.replace("\\", "\\\\")
icon_dir = dir_name + "\\\\icon.ico"

def display_markdown(markdown_text):
    # Convert Markdown to HTML
    html_content = markdown.markdown(markdown_text)

    # Create the Tkinter window
    window = tk.Tk()
    window.iconbitmap(icon_dir)
    window.title("Markdown Reader")

    # Create an HTMLLabel to display the HTML content
    html_label = HTMLLabel(window, html=html_content)
    html_label.pack(expand=True, fill="both")

    # Run the Tkinter main loop
    window.mainloop()

def display_markdown_from_file(file_path):
    with open(file_path, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as file:
        markdown_text = file.read()
    display_markdown(markdown_text)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) == 2:
        display_markdown_from_file(sys.argv[1])
    else:
        file = FileDialog.askopenfile(mode="r", filetypes=[("Markdown Files", "*.md *.markdown")], title="Open Markdown File")
        if file is not None:
            content = file.read()
            display_markdown(content)

Answer 1

The problem becomes clearer if we print the paths.

...
import sys
import os

dir_name = os.path.dirname(__file__)
dir_name = dir_name.replace("\\", "\\\\")
icon_dir = dir_name + "\\\\icon.ico"

print(__file__)
print("dir_name", dir_name)
print("icon_dir", icon_dir)
...

Outputs

Note: The icon file (icon.ico) exists in the same directory as the Python script. I've simplified your program so that it only takes arguments and shows a GUI.

Python file:

(env) F:\cxexe>test.py qwerty
F:\cxexe\test.py
dir_name F:\\cxexe
icon_dir F:\\cxexe\\icon.ico

Output for exe:

(env) F:\cxexe>cxfreeze -c test.py --target-dir dist --include-files icon.ico

(env) F:\cxexe>cd dist

(env) F:\cxexe\dist>test.exe qwerty
test.py
dir_name
icon_dir \\icon.ico
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
    return self.tk.call('wm', 'iconbitmap', self._w, bitmap)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
_tkinter.TclError: bitmap "\\icon.ico" not defined

As we can see, the dir_name is now an empty string.

Backslashes become redundant in the file name.

>>> import os
>>> path = "test.py" # __file__
>>> os.path.split(path)
('', 'test.py')
>>> os.path.dirname(path)
''
>>> print(os.path.dirname(path) + "\\\\icon.ico")
\\icon.ico

os.path.dirname

Solution

---

Docs recommendation

...
import sys
import os


icon_file = "icon.ico"

def find_data_file(filename):
    if getattr(sys, "frozen", False):
        # The application is frozen
        datadir = os.path.dirname(sys.executable)
    else:
        # The application is not frozen
        # Change this bit to match where you store your data files:
        datadir = os.path.dirname(__file__)
    return os.path.join(datadir, filename)


def display_markdown(markdown_text):
    ...
    window.iconbitmap(find_data_file(icon_file))
    ...

Docs

Another sample

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