Widgetui

A bevy like widget system for Ratatui and Crossterm

Installation

Run the following within your project directory

cargo add widgetui
cargo add ratatui
cargo add crossterm

Introduction

Widgetui is a wrapper over Ratatui's Crossterm backend which allows for powerful abstraction, and simplifies creating a good app within Ratatui.

Why pick this over Ratatui?

Widgetui isn't meant to replace or undermine Ratatui. It is simply a wrapper. Without Ratatui, this crate would not exist, as well, you will still require Ratatui and Crossterm crates just to work with the apps.

TLDR; Don't, use both together to improve developer experience, and build your apps faster!

Quickstart

use ratatui::widgets::Paragraph;

use widgetui::*;

use std::{cell::RefMut, error::Error};

fn widget(frame: &mut WidgetFrame, mut events: RefMut<Events>) -> WidgetResult {
	frame.render_widget(Paragraph::new("Hello, world!", frame.size()));

    if events.key(crossterm::event::KeyCode::Char('q')) {
        events.register_exit();
    }

    Ok(())
}

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
    App::new(100)?.with_widget(widget).run()
}

The above will create an application that will display an empty terminal window, then close once you press q.

This application, with many less lines, will render the same thing that Ratatui's Quickstart renders.

Documentation

Documentation can be found on docs.rs.

Fun Facts

• I chose WidgetFrame because if I just used Widget, then you couldn't do the awesome

use widgetui::*;
use ratatui::prelude::*;

• It took about 10 hours to get this project initially set up!

  • Much longer after I decided to add bevy system like widget methods.

• You used to have to take in a States struct, but in order to fix it, there is a lot of behind the scenes things going on!

• You can only use 11 states in the same widget!

  • If you need more, please add an issue with details on why, and we may consider adding access to more at once!