ItsPrompt 0.5.0

Prompting - the fancy way

ItsPrompt

Do you ever feel the need to ask a user of your code for an input?

Using input() is easy, but is it great?

Do you want to give the user a selection list, a yes-or-no question, or maybe a multiline input field?

And do you think all of this should be done easily, without carring to much how it all works?

Then you are right here! ItsPrompt gives you the ability to ask the user for input, the fancy way.

ItsPrompt tries to be an easy-to-use module for managing prompts for the user. You task is to create a great program, not how to ask the user for input. That is why ItsPrompt is there to take care of this problem, so you can focus on the important things!

---

A small, thankfull note

This project is not the first to accomplish the above mentioned tasks. There is another package, PyInquirer, which inspired me to build ItsPrompt.

On my way to create a small program I came to a point were I needed a simple GUI, and I tried PyInquirer. Unfortunately, at the current time it is not actively maintained and a bit outdated. I thought of updating it, but then I thought "Isn't it easier to just create my own version?" - And so I did!

ItsPrompt is not a copy or a fork of PyInquirer. I built this module from the ground up, without every looking deep into the source code of PyInquirer.

On my way to build this package, I learned a lot about prompt-toolkit, and all of this just because of PyInquirer! Thanks!

---

Features

• many prompt types (more details below):
  • select
  • raw_select
  • expand
  • checkbox
  • confirm
  • input
• big feature set
• simple, pythonic syntax
• a helpful toolbar with error messages
• customizable style with prompt-toolkit

---

Installation

This package is hosted on pypi, so the installation is as simple as it can get:

python3 -m pip install ItsPrompt

---

Usage

Import the Prompt class:

from ItsPrompt.prompt import Prompt

Now you can ask the user any type of prompt by calling the specific function from the Prompt class, e.g.:

result = Prompt.input('What is your name?')
print(result)

You see how easy it is?

---

Prompt types

As mentioned above, ItsPrompt has multiple prompt types. All of them can be accessed via the Prompt class.

select

Prompt.select(
    question='question',
    options=('option1', ('option2', 'opt2')),
    default='option1',
    style=my_style,
)

additional information on the function arguments can be found in the docstring

raw_select

Prompt.raw_select(
    question='question',
    options=('option1', ('option2', 'opt2')),
    default='opt2',
    allow_keyboard=True,
    style=my_style,
)

additional information on the function arguments can be found in the docstring

expand

Prompt.expand(
    question='question',
    options=('option1', ('2', 'option2', 'opt2')),
    default='opt2',
    allow_keyboard=True,
    style=my_style,
)

additional information on the function arguments can be found in the docstring

checkbox

Prompt.checkbox(
    question='question',
    options=('option1', ('option2', 'opt2')),
    pointer_at=1,
    default_checked='option1',
    min_selections=1,
    style=my_style,
)

additional information on the function arguments can be found in the docstring

confirm

Prompt.confirm(
    question='question',
    default=False,
    style=my_style,
)

additional information on the function arguments can be found in the docstring

input

Prompt.input(
    question='question',
    default='something',
    multiline=False,
    show_symbol='*',
    validate=validation_function,
    style=my_style,
)

additional information on the function arguments can be found in the docstring

---

Additional Features and Tips

Options

The options is always a tuple containing str and tuple objects.

If an option is given as a str, this will be used as the options display name and the id, which will be returned when selecting this option.

In case of expand, the first character of the str will be used as its key.

If an option is given as a tuple, the first value will be the options name, the second value the options id to return.

In case of expand, the first value will be the key, the second value the name and the third value the id.

---

Styling

ItsPrompt uses prompt-toolkit for its prompts. This module not only provides an easy way to interact with the command line, but also a full set of styling features.

To create your own style, there are two ways:

Changing the default style

To change the default style, you need to import the default_style and change its values:

from ItsPrompt.data.style import default_style

default_style.error = 'fg:ansired bg:ansiwhite'

This will automatically change the style of all prompts, which do not have an own style defined.

Creating your own style

To define your own style for a specific prompt, import PromptStyle and create an object. Then assign it to the style argument of a prompt.

from ItsPrompt.data.style import PromptStyle

my_style = PromptStyle(
    question_mark='fg:ansiblue',
    error='fg:ansired bg:ansiwhite',
)

All styles which are not given, will not be the same as the default style. If you want this to be the case, then copy the default_style and change your values, instead of directly creating your own style:

from ItsPrompt.data.style import create_from_default

my_style = create_from_default()

my_style.error = 'fg:ansired bg:ansiwhite'

Warning! Not copying the default style and changing it instead will result in all prompts using your changes, as a variable is by default not a copy, but a reference to the same object!

---

Prompt Validation

The input allows you to validate the input before submitting it. For every character the user types, the validation will be run and a friendly error will be shown in the toolbar.

To use the validation feature, create a function which takes a str as an argument and returns either a str or None.

def input_not_empty(input: str) -> str | None:
    if len(input) == 0:
        return 'Address can not be empty!'

Prompt.input(
    ...
    validate=input_not_empty,
    ...
)

The str argument will be the current user input, which can then be checked, but not changed!

If you want to show that the validation succeeded, return None (or nothing). This will not trigger any errors.

If you want to show an error, return a str with the errors text. Your text will be shown in the toolbar. As long as the validation returns a str, the user may not submit the input.

---

Further Information

If you need some easy examples, refer to example.py!

If you want to contribute, check out the projects repository: ItsPrompt!

If you got any other questions, or want to give an idea on how to improve ItsPrompt, join our discord: TheItsProjects!

---

Puh, that was so much to read... But now, lets have fun with ItsPrompt!