cli_tools_by_oleksa

A zero-dependency Python library for robust console input (validation, menus, type conversion) and cross-platform terminal control and styling.

Purpose

This toolkit is designed to eliminate the notorious boilerplate required for reliable interactive console applications. It allows developers to completely bypass the need for writing repetitive input validation loops (while True: try/except) and managing fragile ANSI escape sequences for styling and cursor control.

Target Audience

cli_tools_by_oleksa is the perfect choice for projects where simplicity and minimal dependencies are paramount:

• Students and Educators: Focus on logic, not boilerplate. Write clean code without reinventing complex validation every time.
• Utility & Script Developers: Build robust, interactive tools and prototypes quickly, without the overhead of heavy frameworks like Click or Typer.
• Minimalist Developers: Achieve production-level reliability and polished UI while maintaining a zero-dependency footprint.

Source Code

https://github.com/01eksa/cli_tools_by_oleksa

Core Features

Input & Validation

• get_input — The central function for user input. Features a robust pipeline (RegEx → Validator → Converter) and an automatic retry loop (retry=True by default).
• get_password — Securely prompts the user for a password (text is not echoed). It supports the full validation pipeline (RegEx → Validator) and automatic retry logic.
• Specialized get_* Wrappers — Dynamically generated functions (e.g., get_int, get_email, get_time) that pre-package specific RegEx patterns and converters for immediate use.
• Validator Factories — Reusable functions that generate validators (is_in_range, is_list_of, etc.), allowing users to easily compose complex input validation logic.
• Validator Composition — Combine multiple rules using all_of and any_of factories for complex, multi-stage data validation.
• Predefined Patterns — A set of included RegEx constants (INT, FLOAT, EMAIL, TIME_24H) available for immediate use in input validation.

Parsing, Splitting, and Converting

• extract_match — Extracts regex groups from a string and converts them to target types in a single step.
• split — Splits strings by delimiter or regex with optional automatic type conversion of elements.
• safe_int / safe_float — Fault-tolerant converters that return None on failure instead of raising exceptions.

Menus & Selection

• menu — Generates a numbered console menu from a dictionary and returns the selected key (int).
• get_choice — Selects a string from a list of options. It is case-insensitive by default and includes auto-retry logic.
• yes_no — A standard confirmation prompt returning a bool (True for yes, False for no).

Terminal Control & Dynamic Display

• Cursor Control — A comprehensive suite of functions (move_to, move_to_column, move_up/down, etc.) for building dynamic interfaces like spinners or progress bars.
• Cross-Platform Reliability — Includes a built-in WinAPI fallback mechanism, ensuring cursor movements and screen clearing work correctly on Windows even if ANSI is not natively supported.
• set_title — Sets the console window title.

Styling & Formatting

• stylize — Apply multiple styles to text.
• rgb - Convert RGB (tuple or hex) into ANSI code for this color
• Style Helpers — Ready-made, semantic functions (error, success, warning, info) for applying standard color schemes instantly.
• Style Constants — Ready-to-use constants for foregrounds (RED), backgrounds (BG_BLUE), and attributes (BOLD, UNDERLINE).
• Pretty Printing — print_table and print_iterable for formatting lists and tabular data with custom patterns.
• print_header — Displays a centered title with decorative separators.
• progress_bar — Adaptive context manager with automatic title wrapping and screen refresh rate limit.

Utilities & Error Safety

• safe_run — A context manager that handles exceptions gracefully and ensures a clean exit on KeyboardInterrupt (Ctrl+C).
• try_until_ok — A universal wrapper to repeatedly execute unstable functions (e.g., network calls) until success.
• on_interrupt — Global interrupt control: use it to define a consistent behavior for Ctrl+C across your entire application.

Requires Python 3.10+ and has zero external dependencies.

Installation

pip install --upgrade cli_tools_by_oleksa

What's new in 2.4.0?

• Added new patterns: HEX_INT, SCIENTIFIC (scientific notation), SHORT_HEX_RGB, and ANY_HEX_RGB.
• Enhanced numeric patterns: FLOAT and NUMBER now support "lazy" syntax (e.g., .5 and 5.).
• Expanded NUMBER pattern: Added full support for scientific notation (e.g., 1.2e-3).
• Improved semantics: Renamed USERNAME pattern to IDENTIFIER. USERNAME and VAR remain available as aliases.
• Fixed documentation: Corrected the progress_bar.py usage example.

What's new in 2.3.0?

• Added tests for core input functions
• Removed DATE_DMY and DATE_YMD patterns and get_date_dmy and get_date_ymd functions because of unsafety
• Added is_date and is_time validators to safe check if strings match date / time format
• Fixed issues with import get_password

What's new in 2.2.0?

• Added on_interrupt function to set default KeyboardInterrupt handling for all functions with on_keyboard_interrupt parameter.
• Added simple progress bar context manager (look for example 3)
• The source code is available on GitHub

What's new in 2.1.1?

• Added on_keyboard_interrupt parameter to customize KeyboardInterrupt handling to get_input, try_until_ok, safe_run. Also, by default, a newline character is now printed before calling sys.exit(0).
• Fixed an issue with style support on Linux

What's new in 2.1?

• Functions for combining multiple validators: any_of and all_of and not_in_list validator
• get_input and all child functions now have retry=True by default

Examples

1. Basic Functions

from cli_tools import print_header, get_input, get_int, get_number
from cli_tools.validators import is_in_range


print_header('Basic CLI Functions')

name = get_input(
    'What is your name? ',
    # DEMO: converter can modify input before return.
    # NOTE: For simple string ops like this, get_input().strip().capitalize() is cleaner.
    converter=lambda s: s.strip().capitalize(),
    # returns 'Anonymous' if the user presses Enter.
    default='Anonymous'
)


# get_int ensures integer format.
age = get_int(
    'How old are you? ',
    # validator checks if the number is within the range [10, 100].
    validator=is_in_range(10, 100),
    # message to show if input is incorrect
    if_invalid='Age must be an integer between 10 and 100.',
)

# get_number passes int and float numbers (returns always float).
num = get_number(
    'What is your favourite number? ',
    if_invalid='Please, enter a number.'
)


print(f"Nice to meet you, {name}! You are {age} years old and your favorite number is {num}. I like it!")

2. Menu, Choices and Format Output

from cli_tools import print_header, get_choice, menu, yes_no, print_iterable, print_table


# Defines the main menu options for the menu() function.
# Keys (int) are the expected user input; values (str) are the displayed option text.
main_menu = {
    1: 'New game',
    2: 'Best players',
    3: 'Show results',
    0: 'Quit',
}

# Simple list of players for print_iterable demonstration.
players = [
    'You',
    'Not you',
    'Who?'
]

# Dictionary of results for print_table demonstration.
# The items (key-value pairs) will be unpacked into table rows.
results = {
    'Easy': 2308,
    'Medium': 1841,
    'Hard': 1550,
}


def play():
    """Starts the game flow, handling difficulty selection."""

    modes = ['Easy', 'Medium', 'Hard']

    # get_choice() validates user input against a list of options (modes).
    # show=True displays the options automatically before prompting.
    mode = get_choice(
        options = modes,
        prompt = 'Choose difficulty: ',
        if_invalid = 'Please, enter a valid mode name.',
        show = True
    ).lower()

    print(f'Some game logic for {mode} mode...')


def main():
    """Main loop for the CLI application, controlling flow via the menu."""

    # print_header() adds visual separation and a centered title to the console.
    print_header('Choices And Format Demo', char='=', space=3)

    while True:
        # menu() handles display, validates input against the dictionary keys, and returns the selected key (int).
        match menu(main_menu, 'What would you like to do? '):
            case 1:
                play()
            case 2:
                # print_iterable() outputs a one-dimensional list with custom formatting.
                print_iterable(
                    players,
                    start='\nBest players:\n',
                    item_pattern='- {}'
                )
            case 3:
                # print_table() iterates over results.items() and unpacks each pair into the row_pattern.
                print_table(
                    results.items(),
                    # Pattern uses format specifiers for alignment:
                    # {:<6} for left-aligned string, {:>8} for right-aligned integer
                    row_pattern = '{:<6}{:>8}',
                    start = '\nMode\tResults\n'
                )
            case 0:
                # yes_no() prompts for confirmation and returns a boolean (True for 'yes', False for 'no').
                if yes_no('Exit? [y/N]: '):
                    break

    print('Bye!')


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

3. Progress Bar

from time import sleep
from cli_tools import progress_bar


with progress_bar(1000, 'Processing...', length=20) as bar:
    for i in range(500):
        sleep(0.01)             # do your job here
        bar.update(steps=2)

print('Done')

4. Project Example: Simple Calculator

import re
from cli_tools import (print_header, get_input,
                           extract_match) # extract list of all matches, optionally convert every match
from cli_tools.patterns import NUMBER     # Ready-made pattern: accepts both int and float

# Pattern <number> <operator> <number>, spaces ignored
simple_expr_pattern = re.compile(fr' *({NUMBER.pattern}) *([+\-*/^]) *({NUMBER.pattern}) *')
# Accepts either numbers or operators. Converts numbers to float
converter = lambda x: float(x) if x not in '+-*/^' else x

print_header('| Simple calculator |', '—')
print('Supports simple expressions in format <number> <operator> <number>. Press Ctrl+C to exit.')

while True:
    # Guaranteed to pass only input that matches the pattern
    expr = get_input('> ', pattern=simple_expr_pattern, if_invalid='Wrong format!')
    # Unpack the input, immediately converting the numbers
    left, operator, right = extract_match(expr, simple_expr_pattern, converter=converter)

    match operator:
        case '+':
            print(left+right)
        case '-':
            print(left-right)
        case '*':
            print(left*right)
        case '/':
            if right == 0:
                print('Division by zero is not allowed!')
                continue
            print(left/right)
        case '^':
            print(left**right)
        case _:
            print('Wrong operator!')

5. Styles

import cli_tools.styles as s
from cli_tools.styles import (
    rgb,       # Converts full-range RGB (HEX or tuple) into an ANSI color code.
    stylize    # Applies one or more style codes (color, background, format) to text.
)


# These functions apply a default foreground color and return the styled string.
error_msg = s.error('Error message')
warning_msg = s.warning('Warning message')
success_msg = s.success('Success message')
info_msg = s.info('Info message')

print(error_msg)
print(warning_msg)
print(success_msg)
print(info_msg)

# Define custom color using an RGB tuple (24-bit color).
tuple_yellow = (240, 240, 100)

# Apply the tuple color as foreground (text).
print(
    stylize('Yellow text', rgb(tuple_yellow))
)

# Apply the tuple color as background (using is_bg=True) and combine with BLACK foreground (text).
print(
    stylize('Yellow background', rgb(tuple_yellow, is_bg=True), s.BLACK)
)

# Define custom colors using the rgb function with HEX codes.
# The first color is foreground (text), the second specifies the background (bg#).
gray = rgb('#dddddd')
darkblue_bg = rgb('bg#0a0a88')

# wrap() applies multiple styles (foreground, background, and formatting constants).
print(
    stylize('Styled message', gray, darkblue_bg, s.ITALIC, s.UNDERLINE)
)

6. Terminal

from time import sleep
from cli_tools import terminal as t


t.clear_screen()
t.home_cursor()
t.set_title('Title')

print('Hello!')

print('This text will disappear in a second.')
sleep(1)
t.move_up(1)
t.clear_line()

print('Simple progress bar example: ')
pattern = '[{:<10}]'

for i in range(1, 11):
    t.clear_line()
    t.move_to_column(1)
    print(pattern.format('='*i), end='', flush=True)
    sleep(0.2)
print()

print('Simple spinner example: ', end='')
for i in range(4):
    for status in ['|', '/', '—', '\\']:
        print(status, end='', flush=True)
        sleep(0.1)
        t.move_backward(1)

print('Done')

7. Error Handling

import random, time

from cli_tools.exceptions import (CLIError,         # Base class for all raised errors
                                  APIError,         # Error that raised when you pass invalid data to a function.
                                  ValidationError,  # Data not validated
                                  ConversionError)  # The transferred converter caused an error
from cli_tools import safe_run, try_until_ok, print_header

print_header('Safe Execution Demo')

with safe_run(debug=False, exit_on_error=False):
    print("Press Ctrl+C to test graceful exit, or wait for the error...")

    for i in range(3, 0, -1):
        print(f"Crashing in {i}...")
        time.sleep(1)

    raise CLIError("Something went wrong inside the app!")

print("App still working.")

###

print_header('Retry Logic Demo')


def unstable_network_request():
    """Simulates a connection that fails 70% of the time."""
    if random.random() < 0.7:
        raise ConnectionError("Connection timed out")
    return "200 OK"


print("Attempting to connect to server...")

status = try_until_ok(
    unstable_network_request,
    exceptions=ConnectionError,
    on_exception="Connection failed. Retrying..."
)

print(f"Success! Server response: {status}")

Roadmap

Next Steps (Technical & Infrastructure):

• Detailed documentation

Next Steps (Feature Development):

• Progress bar and Spinners (High-level API)
• Enhanced Validator Functionality:
  • Expand built-in library with more specialized validators