Boxen

A Rust implementation of the popular boxen library for creating styled terminal boxes around text.

Features

• 🎨 Multiple border styles - Single, double, round, bold, and custom borders
• 📐 Flexible alignment - Left, center, and right text alignment
• 🎯 Precise spacing - Fine-grained control over padding and margins
• 🌈 Rich colors - Support for named colors, hex codes, and RGB values
• 📝 Title support - Add titles with customizable positioning
• 🔤 Unicode aware - Proper handling of Unicode characters and ANSI escape sequences
• 📱 Responsive - Fullscreen mode and terminal-aware layouts
• ⚡ Performance optimized - Minimal allocations and efficient text processing
• 🛡️ Type safe - Comprehensive error handling with descriptive messages

Installation

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]

boxen = "0.1.3"

Quick Start

use ::boxen::{boxen, builder, BorderStyle, TextAlignment};

fn main() {
    // Simple box with default settings
    let simple = boxen("Hello, World!", None).unwrap();
    println!("{}", simple);

    // Using the builder pattern for more control
    let fancy = builder()
        .border_style(BorderStyle::Double)
        .padding(2)
        .margin(1)
        .text_alignment(TextAlignment::Center)
        .title("Greeting")
        .border_color("blue")
        .render("Hello, World!")
        .unwrap();
    println!("{}", fancy);
}

Examples

Basic Usage

use ::boxen::boxen;

let result = boxen("Simple box", None).unwrap();
println!("{}", result);

Output:

┌──────────┐
│Simple box│
└──────────┘

Builder Pattern

use ::boxen::{builder, BorderStyle, TextAlignment};

let result = builder()
    .border_style(BorderStyle::Round)
    .padding(1)
    .text_alignment(TextAlignment::Center)
    .width(20)
    .title("Status")
    .border_color("green")
    .render("All systems operational")
    .unwrap();
println!("{}", result);

Output:

╭─── Status ────╮
│               │
│  All systems  │
│  operational  │
│               │
╰───────────────╯

Convenience Functions

use ::boxen::{simple_box, double_box, round_box};

println!("{}", simple_box("Default style"));
println!("{}", double_box("Double border"));
println!("{}", round_box("Round corners"));

Advanced Styling

use ::boxen::{builder, BorderStyle, TextAlignment, Float};

let result = builder()
    .border_style(BorderStyle::Bold)
    .padding((2, 4, 2, 4))  // top, right, bottom, left
    .margin(1)
    .text_alignment(TextAlignment::Center)
    .title_alignment(TitleAlignment::Center)
    .float(Float::Center)
    .width(40)
    .height(8)
    .title("🎉 Celebration")
    .border_color("#ff6b6b")
    .background_color("#ffe66d")
    .render("Congratulations!\nYou've mastered boxen!")
    .unwrap();
println!("{}", result);

Error Handling

use ::boxen::{builder, BoxenError};

match builder()
    .width(5)  // Too narrow
    .padding(10)  // Too much padding
    .render("This won't fit") {
    Ok(result) => println!("{}", result),
    Err(BoxenError::ConfigurationError(msg)) => {
        eprintln!("Configuration error: {}", msg);
    }
    Err(e) => eprintln!("Error: {}", e),
}

Border Styles

Boxen supports various border styles:

| Style | Preview | | -------------- | ----------- | --- | --- | --- | ----- | | Single | ┌─┐│ │└─┘ | | Double | ╔═╗║ ║╚═╝ | | Round | ╭─╮│ │╰─╯ | | Bold | ┏━┓┃ ┃┗━┛ | | SingleDouble | ╓─╖║ ║╙─╜ | | DoubleSingle | ╒═╕│ │╘═╛ | | Classic | +--+ | | | | +--+ |

Color Support

Boxen supports multiple color formats:

use ::boxen::builder;

// Named colors
builder().border_color("red");
builder().background_color("blue");

// Hex colors
builder().border_color("#ff0000");
builder().background_color("#0000ff");

// RGB colors
builder().border_color((255, 0, 0));
builder().background_color((0, 0, 255));

Performance

Boxen is optimized for performance:

• Minimal allocations: Smart string buffer management
• Unicode aware: Efficient width calculation for international text
• ANSI handling: Proper escape sequence processing
• Caching: Terminal dimensions and expensive calculations are cached

Benchmark results on a modern machine:

• Simple box: ~10μs
• Complex styled box: ~50μs
• Large text (1000 lines): ~2ms

Examples

Run the included examples to see boxen in action:

# Basic usage patterns

cargo run --example main_api_demo


# Color demonstrations

cargo run --example color_demo


# Comprehensive feature showcase

cargo run --example comprehensive_demo


# Performance testing

cargo run --example performance_demo


# Error handling patterns

cargo run --example error_handling_demo


# Fullscreen mode

cargo run --example fullscreen_demo


# Interactive clock with spinner

cargo run --example clock_spinner

Documentation

• API Documentation - Complete API reference
• Usage Guide - Detailed usage examples
• Customization Guide - Advanced styling techniques

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

License

This project is licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Acknowledgments

• Inspired by the original boxen TypeScript library by Sindre Sorhus
• Built with ❤️ for the Rust community