clickqt

clickqt generates Qt GUIs from click commands. Your click CLI remains the single source of truth, your users get the benefit from a GUI.

Feature List

• Build a GUI automatically from click CLIs
• Launch GUIs for already installed CLIs (or from a Python file) via clickqtfy.
• Ship a GUI for your Python package with three lines of code
• Map common click types to Qt widgets, including bool, int, float, str, Choice, DateTime, Path, File, tuple, nargs, and multiple.
• Support for hierarchically nested click.Groups
• Carry over defaults, required flags, callbacks, and envvar-based initialization.
• Execute your command from the GUI and stream stdout/stderr to an in-app terminal panel.
• Export the current GUI state as a shell command and import command lines from the clipboard.
• Support option grouping headers from click-option-group.

Installation instructions

clickqt requires Python >=3.10.

Install from PyPI:

python -m pip install clickqt

Install from conda-forge:

conda install -c conda-forge clickqt

Install for local development:

python -m pip install --editable .[tests]
pre-commit install

Usage for end users (via clickqtfy)

Generate a GUI from an installed entry point:

clickqtfy ENTRYPOINT

Generate a GUI from a Python file and a click command object name:

clickqtfy path/to/module.py COMMAND_FUNCTION

In the generated GUI:

• Run executes the current command.
• Stop requests interruption of a running command.
• Copy-To-Clipboard exports the current command line.
• Import-From-Clipboard parses a command line and updates widgets.

Usage for library maintainers

Expose a GUI to your users via the qtgui_from_click function:

import click
from clickqt import qtgui_from_click


@click.command()
@click.option("--count", default=1, type=int)
@click.argument("name")
def greet(count: int, name: str) -> None:
    for _ in range(count):
        click.echo(f"Hello {name}")


greet_gui = qtgui_from_click(
    greet,
    application_name="Greeter",
    invocation_command="greet",
)

Publish CLI and GUI entry points in pyproject.toml:

[project.scripts]
greet = "yourpkg.cli:greet"

[project.gui-scripts]
greet_gui = "yourpkg.cli:greet_gui"

For custom click.ParamType, provide a widget/getter/setter mapping:

from PySide6.QtWidgets import QLineEdit

custom_mapping = {
    MyParamType: (
        QLineEdit,
        lambda w: w.widget.text(),
        lambda w, v: w.widget.setText(str(v)),
    )
}
gui = qtgui_from_click(cmd, custom_mapping=custom_mapping)

Constraints

• Unknown custom click.ParamType falls back to a text field unless you provide custom_mapping.
• click-option-group is displayed visually, but group relationship rules are not enforced by clickqt.
• Parameters with hidden=True are currently still rendered in the GUI.
• clickqt executes command callbacks directly; advanced custom click.Command/click.Context behavior may differ from CLI invocation.
• Multi-value envvar handling can differ from Click's type-specific envvar splitting behavior.

Licensing

MIT License. See LICENSE.md.