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SwiftCursesTerm

You can use the SwiftcursesTerm library to create text based interfaces for your command-line tools. The library uses C ncurses(3) library. Currently the library is a work in progress, so the API might change to prived a more Swifty library.

If you are interested in seeing a full implementation, the following post shows how to build a text-based clock using this library:

https://rderik.com/blog/building-a-text-based-application-using-swift-and-ncurses/

And the code for that application can be found in the following GitHub repository:

https://github.com/rderik/clock

Using it on your command-line tools

You need to add it as a dependencty to your package manifesto Package.swift. For example:

// swift-tools-version:5.2
// The swift-tools-version declares the minimum version of Swift required to build this package.

import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
    name: "clock",
    dependencies: [
        // Dependencies declare other packages that this package depends on.
        // .package(url: /* package url */, from: "1.0.0"),
        .package(name: "SwiftCursesTerm", url: "https://github.com/rderik/SwiftCursesTerm.git", from: "0.1.1"),
    ],
    targets: [
        // Targets are the basic building blocks of a package. A target can define a module or a test suite.
        // Targets can depend on other targets in this package, and on products in packages which this package depends on.
        .target(
            name: "clock",
            dependencies: ["SwiftCursesTerm"]),
        .testTarget(
            name: "clockTests",
            dependencies: ["clock"]),
    ]
)

Check the latest release version at https://github.com/rderik/SwiftCursesTerm/releases/latest.

Now you can import SwiftCursesTerm and use all of its functionality.

#Example usage

Text format:

import Foundation
import SwiftCursesTerm

var term = SwiftCursesTerm()
term.addStr(content: "Hello, world!", refresh: true)
let green = term.defineColorPair(foreground: CursesColor.white, background: CursesColor.green)
term.setAttributes([TextAttribute.bold, TextAttribute.underline], colorPair: green)
term.addStr(content: "Hello, in Green!", refresh: true)
getch()
term.shutdown()
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS)

The SwiftCursesTerm object frees memory when it is deinitilized, but if you want to make sure it frees the memory call the function shutdown() and it'll close the ncurses session and free any window you created.

Windows

import Foundation
import SwiftCursesTerm

var term = SwiftCursesTerm()
term.refresh()
var win1 = term.newWindow(height: 20, width: 20, line: 0, column: 0)
var win2 = term.newWindow(height: 20, width: 20, line: 0, column: 21)
term.addStr(window: win1, content: "Hello, world!", refresh: true)
let green = term.defineColorPair(foreground: CursesColor.white, background: CursesColor.green)
term.setWindowColorPair(window: win2, colorPair: green)
term.setAttributes(window: win2, [TextAttribute.dim, TextAttribute.underline], colorPair: green)
term.addStrTo(window: win2, content: "Hello, in Green!", line: 10, column: 0, refresh: true)
getch()
term.shutdown()
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS)

Notice that you can call addStr to add a String on the current cursor position or call addStrTo to move to a position and then add the string.

I encourage you to read the SwiftCursesTerm.swift file to view all the available options.

Contributing

If you want to contribute:

Author

Derik Ramirez - https://rderik.com

License

This library is under the [MIT Licence][./LICENSE]