easyascii-py 1.0.1

A simple, zero-dependency library for creating ASCII art and console UIs.

Easy ASCII

A comprehensive, single-file, zero-dependency Python library for creating beautiful and functional text-based user interfaces and ASCII art.

Easy ASCII is designed to be incredibly simple to use while providing a powerful set of tools for command-line applications. Whether you need to display data in a clean table, create an eye-catching banner, or show progress for a long-running task, this library has you covered.

✨ Key Features

• 📦 Advanced Boxes: Create boxes with multiple border styles, titles, and text alignment.

• 📊 Data Tables: Generate perfectly formatted tables from lists of dictionaries with text wrapping.

• 🅰️ FIGlet Banners: Render large ASCII text banners with a built-in font.

• ⏳ Progress Bars & Spinners: Provide user feedback for long-running tasks.

• 🌳 Tree Structures: Visualize hierarchical data like file systems.

• 🏛️ Multi-Column Layouts: Arrange text into clean, evenly spaced columns.

• 📝 Lists & Rules: Create ordered/unordered lists and customizable horizontal rules.

• 🐍 Pure Python: Single file with zero external dependencies.

• 💡 Developer Friendly: Fully type-hinted with extensive docstrings and a flexible API.

📦 Installation

Install easyascii directly from PyPI:

pip install easyascii

To get the latest version, you can upgrade with:

pip install --upgrade easyascii

🚀 Quick Start

Creating a rich console output is simple. Just import the functions you need and call them.

import easyascii

1. Create a banner for your application

easyascii.print_banner("My App")

2. Create a styled box for a welcome message

easyascii.print_box( "Welcome to my awesome application!\nHere is some important information.", title="Info", style="rounded" )

3. Display data in a table

user_data = [

{"ID": 1, "Username": "alex", "Status": "Active"},

{"ID": 2, "Username": "brian_the_dev", "Status": "Active"},

{"ID": 3, "Username": "casey", "Status": "Inactive"},

]

easyascii.print_table(user_data, style="double", align={"ID": "center"})

Output:

# # # # ### #### ####

## ## # # # # # # # #

# # # # ##### #### ####

# # # # # # #

# # # # # # #

╭──────────────── Info ─────────────────╮

│ Welcome to my awesome application! │

│ Here is some important information. │

╰───────────────────────────────────────╯

╔════╦═══════════════╦══════════╗

║ ID ║ Username ║ Status ║

╠════╬═══════════════╬══════════╣

║ 1 ║ alex ║ Active ║

║ 2 ║ brian_the_dev ║ Active ║

║ 3 ║ casey ║ Inactive ║

╚════╩═══════════════╩══════════╝

📚 API Reference Convenience print_* Wrappers

Display Functions

box()

table()

banner()

hr()

listing()

columns()

tree()

Dynamic UI Functions

progress_bar()

Spinner

Convenience print_

For every function that returns a string (like box, table, etc.), there is a corresponding "print_" version (e.g., print_box) that prints the result directly to the console. The "print_" versions accept the exact same arguments.

Display Functions

box()

Creates a string of text inside an ASCII box.

Signature:

def box( text: Any,

style: str = "light",

width: Optional[int] = None,

title: str = "",

align: str = "left",

padding: Union[int, Tuple[int, int]] = 1

) -> str

Parameters:

text (Any): The text content to display. Can be multi-line.

style (str): The border style. Available: "light", "heavy", "double", "rounded", "star", "hash", "plus".

width (Optional[int]): Total width of the box. Auto-calculated if None.

title (str): An optional title to display on the top border.

align (str): Text alignment ("left", "center", "right").

padding (Union[int, Tuple[int, int]]): Horizontal and vertical padding. E.g., 1 or (2, 1).

Example:

message = "This box is centered and has a heavy border style with custom padding." print(easyascii.box(message, style="heavy", title="Attention", align="center", padding=(4, 1), width=70))

Output:

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Attention ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓

┃ ┃

┃ This box is centered and has a heavy border style ┃

┃ with custom padding. ┃

┃ ┃

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

table()

Creates a formatted ASCII table from a list of dictionaries. Signature:

def table( data: List[Dict[str, Any]],

headers: Optional[List[str]] = None,

style: str = "light",

align: Union[str, Dict[str, str]] = "left",

max_col_width: Optional[int] = None

) -> str

Parameters:

data (List[Dict]): A list of dictionaries, where each dict is a row.

headers (Optional[List[str]]): A list of header keys. If None, uses keys from the first row.

style (str): The border style (see box() for options).

align (Union[str, Dict]): Default alignment, or a dictionary mapping header keys to alignments.

max_col_width (Optional[int]): Maximum width for any single column (enables text wrapping).

Example:

data = [ {"File": "main.py", "Size (KB)": 12.5, "Last Modified": "2023-10-27"},

{"File": "utils/helpers.py", "Size (KB)": 34.1, "Last Modified": "2023-10-26"},

{"File": "README.md", "Size (KB)": 2.8, "Last Modified": "2023-10-27"},

] print(easyascii.table(data, style="light", align={"Size (KB)": "right"}))

Output:

┌──────────────────┬─────────────┬───────────────┐

│ File │ Size (KB) │ Last Modified │

├──────────────────┼─────────────┼───────────────┤

│ main.py │ 12.5 │ 2023-10-27 │

│ utils/helpers.py │ 34.1 │ 2023-10-26 │

│ README.md │ 2.8 │ 2023-10-27 │

└──────────────────┴─────────────┴───────────────┘

banner()

Renders large ASCII text.

Signature:

def banner(text: str) -> str

Example:

print(easyascii.banner("Ready!"))

Output:

#### ##### ### #### # # #

# # # # # # # # # #

#### ### ##### # # # #

# # # # # # # #

# # ##### # # #### # #

hr()

Creates a horizontal rule (a line separator).

Signature:

def hr(width: Optional[int] = None, char: str = "-", title: str = "") -> str

Example:

print(easyascii.hr(width=50, char="=", title="Section Break"))

Output:

================= Section Break ==================

listing()

Formats an iterable into an ordered or unordered list.

Signature:

def listing(items: Iterable[Any], ordered: bool = False, indent: int = 2) -> str

Example:

tasks = ["Design UI", "Implement backend", "Write tests"]

print("Todo List:")

print(easyascii.listing(tasks, ordered=True, indent=4))

Output:

Todo List: 1. Design UI 2. Implement backend 3. Write tests

columns()

Arranges a list of strings into multiple columns. Signature:

def columns(texts: List[str], num_cols: int = 2, spacing: int = 4) -> str Example:

items = ["Apple", "Banana", "Cherry", "Date", "Elderberry", "Fig", "Grape"]

print(easyascii.columns(items, num_cols=3, width=50))

Output:

Apple Elderberry

Banana Fig

Cherry Grape

Date

tree()

Generates an ASCII tree structure from a nested dictionary.

Signature:

def tree(data: Dict[str, Any]) -> str

Example:

file_system = {

"project/": {

"src/": {

"main.py": None,

"utils.py": None

},

"README.md": None

}

}

print(easyascii.tree(file_system))

Output:

└── project/ ├── src/ │ ├── main.py │ └── utils.py └── README.md

Dynamic UI Functions

progress_bar()

Prints a dynamic, single-line progress bar. Should be called inside a loop. Signature:

def progress_bar(

iteration: int,

total: int,

prefix: str = 'Progress:',

suffix: str = 'Complete',

length: int = 50,

fill: str = '█'

)

Example:

import time

import easyascii

total_items = 200

for i in range(total_items + 1):

easyascii.progress_bar(i, total_items, prefix='Processing:', suffix='Done')

time.sleep(0.01)

Output (at the end of the loop):

Processing: |██████████████████████████████████████████████████| 100.0% Done

Spinner

A context manager for displaying a loading spinner for long operations. Signature:

class Spinner: def __init__(self, text: str = "Loading...", style: str = "dots", delay: float = 0.1) style (str): The spinner animation style. Available: "dots", "line", "arrow", "box".

Example:

import time

import easyascii

with easyascii.Spinner("Fetching data from API...", style="arrow"):

time.sleep(3)

print("Data fetched successfully!")

Output (during execution):

Fetching data from API... ↑ (character rotates)

Output (after completion):

Data fetched successfully!

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome! Feel free to check the issues page.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.