Effortless permalinks in Streamlit apps

This is my fork of streamlit-permalink: https://github.com/franekp/streamlit-permalink.

Installation

pip install streamlit-permalink-pg

Basic usage

The streamlit_permalink (shorthand: stp) namespace contains url-aware versions of almost all input widgets from Streamlit. General usage of input widgets is described in Streamlit docs.

• stp.checkbox
• stp.radio
• stp.selectbox
• stp.multiselect
• stp.slider
• stp.select_slider
• stp.text_input
• stp.number_input
• stp.text_area
• stp.date_input
• stp.time_input
• stp.color_picker
• stp.form_submit_button
• stp.pills
• stp.segmented_control
• stp.toggle
• stp.data_editor

In addition to standard input widgets, it also has an url-aware version of the streamlit-option-menu component: st.option_menu. For this to work, streamlit-option-menu must be installed separately.

Examples

Several example applications demonstrating various use cases are available:

1. Browse the examples folder in the repository
2. Try the interactive documentation app:

• Locally: streamlit run examples/docs_app.py
• Online: Visit permalink.streamlit.app

Note regarding url_Key

A url_key is required for all widgets. If not specified:

1. The widget's key value will be used as url_key
2. If no key is present, the widget's label will be used

When url_key is specified, it also sets the widget's key. Therefore, it's recommended to use only url_key:

import streamlit_permalink as stp

# Using key parameter makes the widget URL-aware
text1 = stp.text_input('Type some text', url_key='secret')
# If the user typed 'foobar' into the above text field, the
# URL would end with '?secret=foobar' at this point.

Usage inside forms

To use URL-aware widgets inside Streamlit forms, you need to use st.form and st.form_submit_button, which are the URL-aware counterparts of Streamlit's form functions:

import streamlit_permalink as stp
import streamlit as st

with stp.form('some-form'):
  text = stp.text_input('Text field inside form', url_key='secret')
  # At this point the URL query string is empty / unchanged, even
  # if the user has edited the text field.
  if stp.form_submit_button('Submit'):
    # URL is updated only when users hit the submit button
    st.write(text)

Or with alternative syntax:

import streamlit_permalink as stp

form = stp.form('some-form')
form.text_input('Text field inside form', url_key='secret')
# At this point the URL query string is empty / unchanged, even
# if the user has edited the text field.
if form.form_submit_button('Submit'):
  # URL is updated only when users hit the submit button
  st.write(text)

Compression

For widgets that may contain large amounts of text (like text_area), you can enable compression to reduce the URL length.

import streamlit_permalink as stp

# Enable compression for text area content
long_text = stp.text_area("Enter long text", url_key="essay", compress=True)
# The text will be compressed before being added to the URL

By default, compression uses a built-in text compression algorithm. You can also provide custom compression and decompression functions:

import streamlit_permalink as stp
import gzip
import base64

def custom_compress(value: str) -> str:
    # Compress the string and encode the binary result as base64
    compressed = gzip.compress(value.encode('utf-8'))
    return base64.b64encode(compressed).decode('utf-8')

def custom_decompress(value: str) -> str:
    # Decode the base64 string back to binary and then decompress
    binary_data = base64.b64decode(value.encode('utf-8'))
    return gzip.decompress(binary_data).decode('utf-8')

# Use custom compression for a text area
long_text = stp.text_area(
    "Enter long text", 
    url_key="essay", 
    compress=True,
    compressor=custom_compress,
    decompressor=custom_decompress
)

Compression also works with lists, such as in multiselect widgets, where each item in the list will be compressed individually.

Disabling URL-aware Statefulness

In some cases, you might want to use a widget without URL-aware functionality. You can disable this by setting stateful=False:

import streamlit_permalink as stp

# This widget will behave like a regular Streamlit widget
# and won't update the URL or be controlled by URL parameters
text = stp.text_input("Enter text", url_key="non_url_text", stateful=False)

This is useful when you have widgets that should not affect the shareable state of your application.

Configuring URL Value Initialization

By default all stp widgets will automatically populate thier url value upon initialization. This can be turned off by passing init_url=False to the stp widget.

import streamlit_permalink as stp

text = stp.text_input("Enter text", url_key="text_input", init_url=False)

Setting URL Values

Methods to set the URL value are available for each widget using set_url_value. URL value validation is minimal, since the actual widgets args are not accessible. Ensure that any value set by set_url_value is valid for the widget you are setting it for.

import streamlit_permalink as stp

# basic
stp.checkbox.set_url_value(value=True, url_key='checkbox1')

# compression
stp.checkbox.set_url_value(value=True, url_key='checkbox2', compress=True)

# custom compression
stp.checkbox.set_url_value(value=True, url_key='checkbox3', compress=True, compressor=CUSTOM_COMPRESSION_FUNC)

Getting URL Values

likewise use, get_url_value to retrive the url value for widgets. Again, since the actual widget args are not available only minimal validation can be done. multiselect, pills, and segmented_control will return str values regardless of what options are provided.

import streamlit_permalink as stp

# basic
stp.checkbox.get_url_value(url_key='checkbox1')

# compression
stp.checkbox.get_url_value(url_key='checkbox2', compress=True)

# custom compression
stp.checkbox.get_url_value(url_key='checkbox3', compress=True, decompressor=CUSTOM_DECOMPRESSION_FUNC)

Development and Testing

To set up the development environment and run tests:

1. Clone the repository and install in editable mode with test dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/pgarrett-scripps/streamlit-permalink
cd streamlit-permalink
pip install -e ".[test]"

2. Run the tests:

# Run all tests
pytest tests

# Run a specific test file
pytest tests/test_checkbox.py