Skip to main content

Controls reference

Flet UI is built of controls. Controls are organized into hierarchy, or a tree, where each control has a parent (except Page) and container controls like Column, Dropdown can contain child controls, for example:

Page
 ├─ TextField
 ├─ Dropdown
 │   ├─ Option
 │   └─ Option
 └─ Row
     ├─ ElevatedButton
     └─ ElevatedButton

Controls by categories​

Common control properties​

Flet controls have the following properties:

width​

Imposed Control width in virtual pixels.

height​

Imposed Control height in virtual pixels.

left​

Effective inside Stack only. The distance that the child's left edge is inset from the left of the stack.

top​

Effective inside Stack only. The distance that the child's top edge is inset from the top of the stack.

Effective inside Stack only. The distance that the child's right edge is inset from the right of the stack.

bottom​

Effective inside Stack only. The distance that the child's bottom edge is inset from the bottom of the stack.

visible​

Every control has visible property which is True by default - control is rendered on the page. Setting visible to False completely prevents control (and all its children if any) from rendering on a page canvas. Hidden controls cannot be focused or selected with a keyboard or mouse and they do not emit any events.

disabled​

Every control has disabled property which is False by default - control and all its children are enabled. disabled property is mostly used with data entry controls like TextField, Dropdown, Checkbox, buttons. However, disabled could be set to a parent control and its value will be propagated down to all children recursively.

For example, if you have a form with multiple entry controls you can disable them all together by disabling container:

c = Column(controls=[
    TextField(),
    TextField()
])
c.disabled = True
page.add(c)

expand​

When a child Control is placed into a Column or Row you can "expand" it to fill the available space. expand property could be a boolean value (True - expand control to fill all available space) or an integer - an "expand factor" specifying how to divide a free space with other expanded child controls.

For more information and examples about expand property see "Expanding children" sections in Column or Row.

data​

Arbitrary data that can be attached to a control.

Transformations​

opacity​

Makes a control partially transparent. 0.0 - control is completely transparent, not painted at all. 1.0 (default) - a control is fully painted without any transparency.

scale​

Scale control along the 2D plane. Default scale factor is 1.0 - control is not scaled. 0.5 - the control is twice smaller, 2.0 - the control is twice larger.

Different scale multipliers can be specified for x and y axis, but setting Control.scale property to an instance of transform.Scale class:

class Scale:
    scale: float = field(default=None)
    scale_x: float = field(default=None)
    scale_y: float = field(default=None)
    alignment: Alignment = field(default=None)

Either scale or scale_x and scale_y could be specified, but not all of them, for example:

Image(
    src="https://picsum.photos/100/100",
    width=100,
    height=100,
    border_radius=5,
    scale=Scale(scale_x=2, scale_y=0.5)
)

rotate​

Transforms control using a rotation around the center.

The value of rotate property could be one of the following types:

  • number - a rotation in clockwise radians. Full circle 360° is math.pi * 2 radians, 90° is pi / 2, 45° is pi / 4, etc.
  • transform.Rotate - allows to specify rotation angle as well as alignment - the location of rotation center.

For example:

Image(
    src="https://picsum.photos/100/100",
    width=100,
    height=100,
    border_radius=5,
    rotate=Rotate(angle=0.25 * pi, alignment=alignment.center_left)
)