Crate tui

Expand description

tui is a library used to build rich terminal users interfaces and dashboards.

Every application using tui should start by instantiating a Terminal. It is a light abstraction over available backends that provides basic functionalities such as clearing the screen, hiding the cursor, etc. By default only the termion backend is available.

extern crate tui;
extern crate termion;

use std::io;
use tui::Terminal;
use tui::backend::TermionBackend;
use termion::raw::IntoRawMode;

fn main() -> Result<(), io::Error> {
    let stdout = io::stdout().into_raw_mode()?;
    let backend = TermionBackend::new(stdout);
    let mut terminal = Terminal::new(backend)?;
    Ok(())
}

If for some reason, you might want to use the rustbox backend instead, you need the to replace your tui dependency specification by:

[dependencies.tui]
version = "0.3.0"
default-features = false
features = ['rustbox']

and then create the terminal in a similar way:

extern crate tui;

use tui::Terminal;
use tui::backend::RustboxBackend;

fn main() -> Result<(), io::Error> {
    let backend = RustboxBackend::new()?;
    let mut terminal = Terminal::new(backend);
    Ok(())
}

Building a User Interface (UI)

Every component of your interface will be implementing the Widget trait. The library comes with a predefined set of widgets that should met most of your use cases. You are also free to implement your owns.

Each widget follows a builder pattern API providing a default configuration along with methods to customize them. The widget is then registered using its render method that take a Frame instance and an area to draw to.

The following example renders a block of the size of the terminal:

extern crate tui;
extern crate termion;

use std::io;
use termion::raw::IntoRawMode;
use tui::Terminal;
use tui::backend::TermionBackend;
use tui::widgets::{Widget, Block, Borders};
use tui::layout::{Layout, Constraint, Direction};

fn main() -> Result<(), io::Error> {
    let stdout = io::stdout().into_raw_mode()?;
    let backend = TermionBackend::new(stdout);
    let mut terminal = Terminal::new(backend)?;
    let size = terminal.size()?;
    terminal.draw(|mut f| {
        Block::default()
            .title("Block")
            .borders(Borders::ALL)
            .render(&mut f, size);
    })
}

Layout

The library comes with a basic yet useful layout management object called Layout. As you may see below and in the examples, the library makes heavy use of the builder pattern to provide full customization. And Layout is no exception:

extern crate tui;
extern crate termion;

use std::io;
use termion::raw::IntoRawMode;
use tui::Terminal;
use tui::backend::TermionBackend;
use tui::widgets::{Widget, Block, Borders};
use tui::layout::{Layout, Constraint, Direction};

fn main() -> Result<(), io::Error> {
    let stdout = io::stdout().into_raw_mode()?;
    let backend = TermionBackend::new(stdout);
    let mut terminal = Terminal::new(backend)?;
    let size = terminal.size()?;
    terminal.draw(|mut f| {
        let chunks = Layout::default()
            .direction(Direction::Vertical)
            .margin(1)
            .constraints(
                [
                    Constraint::Percentage(10),
                    Constraint::Percentage(80),
                    Constraint::Percentage(10)
                ].as_ref()
            )
            .split(size);
        Block::default()
             .title("Block")
             .borders(Borders::ALL)
             .render(&mut f, chunks[0]);
        Block::default()
             .title("Block 2")
             .borders(Borders::ALL)
             .render(&mut f, chunks[2]);
    })
}

This let you describe responsive terminal UI by nesting layouts. You should note that by default the computed layout tries to fill the available space completely. So if for any reason you might need a blank space somewhere, try to pass an additional constraint and don’t use the corresponding area.