Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Installation
• API Overview and Examples
  • Main Content
  • fzf Free Function
  • fzf_iter Free Function
  • FuzzyFinderBuilder class
  • Going Nuts with All These Features
• fzf Version Compatibility

Introduction

fzf_but_typed is a python wrapper for fzf.
It's different from other existing wrappers because it wraps all of fzf's CLI options and their possible values into neat types, so that you can leverage your IDE/LSP/type-checker as a means of correctly using fzf, without having to lookup usage details in the manpages. Furthermore, being able to use your editor's autocompletion features instead of having to manually type CLI arguments is much more comfortable.

Installation

With pip:

pip install fzf_but_typed

With poetry:

poetry add fzf_but_typed

API Overview and Examples

Main Content

The following items are the bread and butter of this package:

• fzf (free function)
• fzf_iter (free function)
• FuzzyFinder (class)
• FuzzyFinderBuilder (class)
• FuzzyFinderOutput (class)

Many other classes, parts of FuzzyFinderBuilder's configuration are also included, but you're not always going to have to use each of them, so, in this guide, I'll only mention them when necessary, in appropriate examples.

fzf Free Function

Basic Usage:

from fzf_but_typed.lib import fzf, SearchOptions, DisplayOptions, Color, 

# Basic usage
chosen_items = fzf(input_text="first\nsecond\nthird")
print("you chose:", chosen_items[0])

Through fzf, you can pass arguments to FuzzyFinderBuilder too, as keyword arguments, like this:

from fzf_but_typed.lib import (fzf,
    SearchOptions, DisplayOptions, Color, BaseColorScheme)

chosen_items = fzf(
    input_text="first\nsecond\nthird",
    search=SearchOptions(exact=True, case_sensitive=False),
    display=DisplayOptions(color=Color(base_scheme=BaseColorScheme.LIGHT_256)),
)
print("you chose:", chosen_items[0])

fzf_iter Free Function

In the spirit of python's duck typing, this module ships fzf_iter, to which you can pass a list of anything that can be converted into a str, as input.
See the example below

from fzf_but_typed.lib import fzf_iter, Key as SomeStrEnum

a_heterogenous_collection = [
    123123123,
    "aaaaaa",
    12.32,
    SomeStrEnum.CTRL_A,
]
print("you chose:", fzf_iter(input=a_heterogenous_collection)[0])

You can pass keyword arguments to FuzzyFinderBuilder through this function too, just like you did in fzf previously! See the example below

from fzf_but_typed.lib import fzf_iter, InterfaceOptions, ScriptingOptions

a_heterogenous_collection = [123123123, "aaaaaa"]
chosen = fzf_iter(
    input=a_heterogenous_collection,
    interface=InterfaceOptions(multi=True, cycle=True),
    scripting=ScriptingOptions(print0=True),
)

print("you chose:", chosen[0])

FuzzyFinderBuilder class

Using FuzzyFinderBuilder (instead of fzf or fzf_iter) allows you to cache FuzzyFinder objects with predefined settings for later use, being a little bit more efficient than building a new FuzzyFinder every time. It may receive many *Options parameters, as well as a Path to where your fzf binary is located (defaults to whatever shutil.which returns).

from fzf_but_typed.lib import (
    FuzzyFinderBuilder, SearchOptions, ResultsOptions, DisplayOptions,
    PreviewOptions, FuzzyFinder, FuzzyFinderOutput, ExitStatusCode)

# These keyword arguments are also accepted by the previously mentioned 'fzf'
# and 'fzf_iter' functions
builder: FuzzyFinderBuilder = FuzzyFinderBuilder(
    search=SearchOptions(exact=True, case_sensitive=False),
    results=ResultsOptions(tac=True),
    display=DisplayOptions(ansi=True),
    preview=PreviewOptions(preview_command="echo {} | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]"),
)

# This object can be cached to be used again later (thats more efficient than
# calling 'fzf' or 'fzf_iter' multiple times, because this way, you don't have 
# to implicitly instantiate new builders over and over again
fuzzy_finder: FuzzyFinder = builder.build()

# You can access the 'built' command-line arguments through FuzzyFinder
# instances, as well as query the location of the binary to be used
print(f"{fuzzy_finder.binary_path=}")
print(f"{fuzzy_finder.args=}")

# When you feel like it, you can call 'run()' on 'FuzzyFinder' objects. Upon
# completion, they return 'FuzzyFinderOutput' objects
fzf_output: FuzzyFinderOutput = fuzzy_finder.run(input_lines="\n".join([
    "first line", "second line", "yet another line"])

# 'FuzzyFinderOutput' objects contain an 'exit_status_code' field, which is an
# enum, and a output field, which is a 'list' of 'str'
match fzf_output.exit_status_code:
    case ExitStatusCode.ERROR:
        print("something went wrong")
    case other_status_code:
        print("this is what happened:", other_status_code.name)

print("here's what you've selected:")
for item in fzf_output.output:
    print('\t', item)

Going Nuts with All These Features

from fzf_but_typed.lib import (
    Event, Key, ActionSimple, ActionWithArg, ActionWithArgType,
    ActionArgSeparator, FuzzyFinderBuilder, SearchOptions, ResultsOptions,
    InterfaceOptions, LayoutOptions, LayoutType, BorderType, DisplayOptions,
    Color, BaseColorScheme, HistoryOptions, PreviewOptions, ScriptingOptions
)

binds = [
    Binding(Event.ONE, [ActionSimple.ACCEPT]),
    Binding(Key.CTRL_R, [
        ActionWithArg(
            action_type=ActionWithArgType.CHANGE_PREVIEW_WINDOW,
            argument="right,70%|top,60%",
        ),
        ActionWithArg(
            action_type=ActionWithArgType.EXECUTE,
            argument="notify-send {} -t 3000",
            separator=ActionArgSeparator.PERCENT,
        ),
        ActionSimple.FIRST,
    ])
]

builder: FuzzyFinderBuilder = FuzzyFinderBuilder(
    search=SearchOptions(exact=True, case_sensitive=False),
    results=ResultsOptions(tac=True),
    interface=InterfaceOptions(multi=True, cycle=True, bind=binds),
    layout=LayoutOptions(layout=LayoutType.REVERSE, border=BorderType.SHARP),
    display=DisplayOptions(color=Color(base_scheme=BaseColorScheme.LIGHT_256)),
    history=HistoryOptions(history_size=19),
    preview=PreviewOptions(preview_command="echo {} | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]"),
    scripting=ScriptingOptions(read0=True, print0=True),
)

result = builder.build().run(input_lines="\0".join([
    "aaa a a a aaa a a a a a",
    "bb bw b f b bw b b bf db db  ",
    "cc case_sensitive c c       c c c ccccc",
    "asdasdasdas",
    "johnny",
    "",
    "asdasnkdaks",
]))

print("fzf returned code:", result.exit_status_code)
print("you picked:")
for item in result.output:
    print('\t', item)

fzf Version Compatibility

The contents of this package are based on the informations avaliable on my system's man pages for fzf. If your version of fzf is older than mine, some of the features exposed on this API may not work. Conversely, if it's newer than mine, some features you may want to use may be absent here. Regardless, your use case is probably supported by this lib. I've included the aformentioned manpages in this package's repo, so, if you want to be 100% sure, you can download these manpages and run them through 'diff' with your system's manpages for fzf. Furthermore I've included a few CLI utilities for you to test said compatibility, as described below.

To see if your 'fzf' version is the same as mine, run:

python -m fzf_but_typed compatibility

To se if, regardless of the version in question, your fzf's CLI is identical to mine, clone this repository, cd into it and run ./diff-man-pages.sh, like this (assuming you're in an unix-like operating system):

git clone "https://github.com/brunofauth/fzf_but_typed"
cd fzf_but_typed
./diff-man-pages.sh

If any features you want to use are missing and that's sufficiently important to you, you can clone this repo, add that functionality and submit a pull request. I'll be glad to take in contributions!