Prompt in full screen application

[tage64]

Hi!
I want to create a full screen application. Then I want to ask the user for some input at some point in my code. I want to use the prompt function. It seems to me that I can't do that. I've tried run_in_terminal, but it doesn't worked in this case.
Is it possible to do that?
Tage!

[jonathanslenders]

Hi @Tagej,

The prompt function is not meant to run inside the full screen layout, but run_coroutine_in_terminal can handle that. It will hide the full screen layout; display the prompt; and go back. The reason to use that instead of run_in_terminal is because there is already an event loop running that you want to use. run_in_terminal is meant for running blocking functions. Spawning the event loop again from in there doesn't work.

It should look something like this:

from prompt_toolkit.application import run_coroutine_in_terminal
from prompt_toolkit.shortcuts import prompt

def display_prompt_in_app():
    future = run_coroutine_in_terminal(prompt('>', async_=True))

The async_ flag makes that prompt() returns a Future/coroutine. In the future, these are probably becoming asyncio Futures/coroutines, but keep in mind that right now, this is prompt_toolkit specific.

If you want to display an input field on top of the full screen application, then you can for instance consider using a Float/FloatContainer containing a prompt_toolkit.widgets.Dialog containing a prompt_toolkit.widgets.TextArea for the input field. You can show/hide this using a prompt_toolkit.layout.ConditionalContainer. TextArea has several attributes like lexer, completer, etc.. similar to the prompt() function.

Notice that the prompt_toolkit.widgets module is still pretty new. There's still missing documentation, and these classes have to evolve once we discover the best practices and missing features. I like to take the time for this to progress, but if you feel that anything is missing or wrong, don't hesitate to report that.
Hope that helps. :-)

[tage64]

Hi @jonathanslenders
It don't work for me. Here's what I've tested:
`from functools import partial

from prompt_toolkit import prompt
from prompt_toolkit.application import run_coroutine_in_terminal,
run_in_terminal
from prompt_toolkit.eventloop import run_until_complete
from prompt_toolkit.key_binding import KeyBindings
from prompt_toolkit.keys import Keys

key_bindings = KeyBindings()
@key_bindings.add(Keys.ControlS)
def (event):
f = run_coroutine_in_terminal(partial(prompt, '> ', async=True))
run_until_complete(f)
run_in_terminal(partial(print, f2.result()))
print(prompt('> ', key_bindings=key_bindings))
`

It raised an exception when I pressed control S. Try it out yourself.
Is it a bug? Or just bad code?
Tage

[decentral1se]

Hey, I think I'd just like to chime in here and say that I am also building a full screen application (thanks for all the good work to get us here, it's a really nice API so far!) and that I want the full featured prompt(...) to run in one of my TextArea widgets - I am not seeing right now how that is possible and just dropping a body=prompt into existing containers is causing my interface to freeze when I run it. From reading above, this isn't possible right now? Anything that we can do to move it along? Any work arounds right now? Thanks again.

[decentral1se]

Ah, I do see that we have https://github.com/jonathanslenders/python-prompt-toolkit/blob/master/prompt_toolkit/widgets/base.py#L87-L88 which can get me moving along for now. Sorry for the noise.

[decentral1se]

Ah, here is an example which shows you how to build up your own widget that you can control the BufferControl with: https://github.com/jonathanslenders/python-prompt-toolkit/blob/master/examples/full-screen/simple-demos/autocompletion.py. You can start to piece together a prompt and so on.

[rogerbassons]

My solution to this is @jonathanslenders TextArea/input field suggestion:

If you want to display an input field on top of the full screen application, then you can for instance consider using a Float/FloatContainer containing a prompt_toolkit.widgets.Dialog containing a prompt_toolkit.widgets.TextArea for the input field. You can show/hide this using a prompt_toolkit.layout.ConditionalContainer. TextArea has several attributes like lexer, completer, etc.. similar to the prompt() function.

Layout like this:

search_field = SearchToolbar()
input_field = TextArea(height=1, prompt='/', style='class:input-field', multiline=False, wrap_lines=False, search_field=search_field)
input_field.accept_handler = filterTable

root_container = HSplit([
    Window(content=FormattedTextControl(text=getFormattedTable(selected, filteredList), get_cursor_position=GetCursorPosition())),
    ConditionalContainer(content=input_field, filter=isSearching)
])
layout = Layout(container=root_container)

Inside filterTable function you can read user input with input_field.text attribute