ItsPrompt 1.2

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 caring 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!

TOC

• ItsPrompt
• TOC
  • A small, thankful note
  • Features
  • Installation
  • Usage
  • Prompt types
    • select
    • raw_select
    • expand
    • checkbox
    • confirm
    • input
    • table
  • Additional Features and Tips
    • Options
    • Data
    • Styling
    • Prompt Validation
    • Prompt Completion
    • Further Information

---

A small, thankful 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 Unfortunately, at the current time it is not actively maintained and a bit outdated.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 ever 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
  • table
• 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='*', # not compatible with complete, completer
    validate=validation_function,
    complete=['completion1', 'completion2'], # either use complete
    completer=my_completer,                  # or completer
    completion_show_multicolumn=True,
    style=my_style,
)

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

table

Prompt.table(
    question='something',
    data=DataFrame(['something']),
    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.

---

Data

The table prompt takes a mandatory data argument, which needs to be a pandas.DataFrame.

This DataFrame is used as the content of the table. The user may change the fields of the table. The output of the table prompt is a pandas.DataFrame with the user given values.

Currently, the output will convert all input values to a str, so int, bool, ... will be converted to strings. This is a current limitation of the way the table is displayed, but may later be updated.

Another limitation of the table prompt is the use of styling in the DataFrame fields. All styling tags will be displayed as-is, so a <u>...</u> will not be underlined, but rather displayed as its shown.

---

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.

You can learn more about the available styling features in the documentation of prompt-toolkit: Styling.

ItsPrompt makes it a bit easier for you to style each component of a prompt. For every component, we give a separate attribute in the PromptStyle class, which you can style with valid prompt-toolkit styling:

# examples for the different styling class components
Prompt.raw_select(
    question='question',
    options=(
        'option',
        'selected_option',
    )
)

Prompt.input(
    question='question',
    default='grayout',
    validate=lambda x: 'error',
)

ID	styling tag	default style
1	question_mark	fg:ansigreen
2	question	*
3	option	*
4	selected_option	fg:ansicyan
5	tooltip	fg:ansibrightblue bg:ansiwhite bold
6	text	*
7	grayout	fg:ansibrightblack
8	error	fg:ansiwhite bg:ansired bold

*These values are not changed from the default prompt-toolkit values.

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. Instead they will use the styling given by prompt-toolkit. If you want to change our default styles, 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.

---

Prompt Completion

The input prompt type supports auto completion as well.

If you use a completer, you are unable to use show_symbol!

To give auto completion options, there are three ways:

Creating a simple list of possible completions

Input takes a list[str] to use as simple word completions. Each str in the list is a possible value to complete.

prompt.input(
    ...
    completions=['Mainstreet 4', 'Fifth way'],
    ...
)

Creating a nested dictionary of possible completions

You can use a dictionary for nested completions. Each "layer" will be a completion, after the first was accepted. For example:

completions = {
    '1' : {
        '1.1' : None,
        '1.2' : {
            '1.2.1', '1.2.2'
        }
    },
    '2' : {
        '2.1' : { '2.1.1' }
    }
}

prompt.input(
    ...
    completions=completions,
    ...
)

The key of each entry is the completion that will be shown. The key is either None if there are no further completions or a new dict, where the key is the completion and the value is the next "layer", and so on...

For more information, the type signature of CompletionDict is:
dict[str, "CompletionDict | None"]

Using a given Completer by prompt-toolkit or creating your own

In the background your completions will be mapped to a Completer, provided by prompt-toolkit.

If you need more customization, you can use a Completer given by prompt-toolkit or create your own completer. For more information on this process, read here: Completions in prompt-toolkit.

There are a number of completers available, for example:

• PathCompleter
  • automatically complete file system paths
• ExecutableCompleter
  • automatically complete executables in file system
• WordCompleter
  • As simple as it can get. Just completes the letters of the word, that are actually present (the FuzzyCompleter which completions uses in background completes based on a probability, and may show matches which are not exact).
• ...

To add your own completer to an input field, you can use the completer argument:

prompt.input(
    ...
    completer=my_completer,
    ...
)

completions and completer are mutually exclusive! You may not use both!

---

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:

• visit our discussions: ItsPrompt Discussions!
• join our discord: TheItsProjects!

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