inquirer 2.1.0

Collection of common interactive command line user interfaces, based on Inquirer.js

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Collection of common interactive command line user interfaces, based on Inquirer.js.

Goal and Philosophy

Born as a Inquirer.js clone, it shares part of the goals and philosophy.

So, Inquirer should ease the process of asking end user questions, parsing, validating answers, managing hierarchical prompts and providing error feedback.

Documentation

Installation

pip install inquirer

Usage example:

import inquirer

questions = [
  inquirer.Text    ('name',     message="What's your name"),
  inquirer.Password('password', message="Add a password"),
  inquirer.Confirm ('correct',  message="Is correct"),
]

answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

Changelog

It is maintained in the separated file changes.rst

Examples

The examples/ directory contains several examples. Feel free to run them:

python examples/text.py

Objects

The main object is Question, but it should not be instantiated. You must use any of the subclasses, listed below. All of them have the next attributes that can be set in the initialization:

Attribute	Type	Explanation
name	String	The key in the hash of answers.
message	String|Function	To be shown in the prompt to the user. Functions will receive the hash with previous values.
default	Any|Function	Default value. Functions will receive the hash with previous values.
choices	List|Function	List of available options. Functions will receive the hash with previous values.
validate	Bool|Function	If the value set is valid. Functions will receive the hash with previous values and the value set in this question, and should return a boolean.
ignore	Bool|Function	If the quiestion should be shown. Functions will receive the hash with previous values and should return a boolean.

Prompt types

Text

choices argument is not used.

Example:

import inquirer
questions = [
  inquirer.Text('name', message="What's your name"),
  inquirer.Text('surname', message="What's your surname"),
  inquirer.Text('phone', message="What's your phone number",
                validate=lambda x, _: re.match('\d+', x),
                )
]
answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

Password

choices argument is not used.

Example:

import inquirer
questions = [
  inquirer.Password('password', message="What's your password"),
]
answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

Confirm

choices argument is not used.

Example:

import inquirer
questions = [
  inquirer.Confirm('continue', message="Should I continue"),
  inquirer.Confirm('stop', message="Should I stop", default=True),
]
answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

List

Shows a list of choices, and allows the selection of one of them.

Example:

import inquirer
questions = [
  inquirer.List('size',
                message="What size do you need?",
                choices=['Jumbo', 'Large', 'Standard', 'Medium', 'Small', 'Micro'],
            ),
]
answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

Checkbox

Shows a list of choices, with multiple selection.

Example:

import inquirer
questions = [
  inquirer.Checkbox('interests',
                    message="What are you interested in?",
                    choices=['Computers', 'Books', 'Science', 'Nature', 'Fantasy', 'History'],
                    ),
]
answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

Advanced usage

Some tips:

Instantiate from JSON

From version 2.0.2, you can instantiate from JSON strings:

import inquirer
json = """[
  {"name": "name", "kind": "text", "message"="What's your name?"},
  {"name": "surname", "kind": "text", "message"="{name}, what's your surname?"},
  {"name": "alias", "kind": "text", "message"="What's your Alias", "default"="{name}"}
]"""
questions = [inquirer.load_from_json(q) for q in json]
answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

As you can see, it is mandatory to add the name and kind fields. The rest of fields are the same that was documented.

The JSON version has a problem: As you can imagine, it is not possible to use functions anywhere.

There is a shortcut from version 2.0.3 to load lists of questions, because it is supported from load_from_json directly:

import inquirer
json = """[
  {"name": "name", "kind": "text", "message"="What's your name?"},
  {"name": "surname", "kind": "text", "message"="{name}, what's your surname?"},
  {"name": "alias", "kind": "text", "message"="What's your Alias", "default"="{name}"}
]"""
questions = inquirer.load_from_json(json)
answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

Reusing previous answers

Every String argument but name can use any previous answer just putting it in roots:

import inquirer
questions = [
  inquirer.Text('name', message="What's your name?"),
  inquirer.Text('surname', message="{name}, what's your surname?"),
  inquirer.Text('alias', message="What's your Alias"
    default="{name}"),
]
answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Miguel Ángel García (@magmax9), based on Inquirer.js, by Simon Boudrias (@vaxilart)

Licensed under the MIT license.