rustui

A modern, safe, and ergonomic terminal UI library for Rust, designed with Rust's ownership model and safety guarantees in mind.

Features

• Cross-platform: Works on Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS, etc.)
• Double Buffering: Efficient rendering with differential updates
• Rich Text Styling: Support for colors, attributes (bold, italic, underline, etc.)
• Non-blocking Input: Asynchronous keyboard input handling
• Thread-safe: Multi-threaded rendering and input processing

Quick Start

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
rustui = "0.1.1"

Basic Example

use rustui::*;
use std::{thread, time};

const RENDERING_RATE: time::Duration = time::Duration::from_millis(16);
const INPUT_CAPTURING_RATE: time::Duration = time::Duration::from_millis(10); // ms

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let mut win = Window::new(false)?;
    win.init()?; // Initialize the window (enable raw mode)
    win.start(RENDERING_RATE); // Start the rendering thread

    // Create a key listener
    let key_rx = KeyListener::new(INPUT_CAPTURING_RATE);

    let x_center = win.width / 2;
    let y_center: usize = win.height / 2;

    loop {
        // Check for key presses
        if let Ok(key) = key_rx.try_recv() {
            match key {
                Key::Char('q') => break,
                _ => (),
            }
        }

        // Render the frame
        {
            let mut canvas = win.get_canvas();
            canvas.set_border(term::Attr::NORMAL, (255, 255, 255), Color::new());
            canvas.set_str(
                x_center,
                y_center,
                "Hello, world! (Press 'q' to quit)",
                term::Attr::NORMAL,
                (128, 255, 128),
                Color::new(),
                Align::Center,
            );
        }

        thread::sleep(time::Duration::from_millis(100)); // Sleep to prevent high CPU usage
    }
    Ok(())
}

Example Applications

This repository includes a demo application that showcases the library's capabilities:

Hello World

cargo run --example hello_world

Colors

cargo run --example colors

Tetris

cargo run --example tetris

Dependencies

• nix (0.30.+) - For Unix terminal control
• bitflags (2.9+) - For attribute flag management
• rand (0.9+)

Platform Support

Currently supports Unix-like systems:

• Linux
• macOS
• BSD variants

Windows support may be added in future versions.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit pull requests or open issues for bugs and feature requests.

Development

# Clone the repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd rustui

# Build the library
cargo build

# Run tests
cargo test

# Run the demo
cargo run --example hello_world

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Note: This library is designed for educational purposes and as a foundation for terminal-based applications. For production use, consider established libraries like crossterm or tui-rs depending on your needs.