brick
A declarative terminal user interface library
https://github.com/jtdaugherty/brick/
| Version on this page: | 0.37.2@rev:1 |
| LTS Haskell 22.39: | 2.1.1 |
| Stackage Nightly 2024-10-29: | 2.4 |
| Latest on Hackage: | 2.5 |
brick-0.37.2@sha256:3f17edbbf8cd1a6de92217865a133670df5fa4d7a03c7a88f300904c25434932,13391Module documentation for 0.37.2
- Brick
- Data
- Data.IMap
- Data.Text
brick is a Haskell terminal user interface programming library in the
style of gloss. This means
you write a function that describes how your user interface should look,
but the library takes care of a lot of the book-keeping that so commonly
goes into writing such programs.
brick exposes a declarative API. Unlike most GUI toolkits which
require you to write a long and tedious sequence of “create a widget,
now bind an event handler”, brick just requires you to describe your
interface using a set of declarative combinators. Then you provide a
function to transform your application state when input or other kinds
of events arrive.
Under the hood, this library builds upon vty, so some knowledge of Vty will be helpful in using this library.
Release Announcements / News
Find out about brick releases and other news on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/brick_haskell/
Example
Here’s an example interface (see programs/ReadmeDemo.hs):
withBorderStyle unicode $
borderWithLabel (str "Hello!") $
(center (str "Left") <+> vBorder <+> center (str "Right"))
Result:
┌─────────Hello!─────────┐
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ Left │ Right │
│ │ │
│ │ │
└────────────────────────┘
Featured Projects
To get an idea of what some people have done with brick, take a look
at these projects:
tetris, an implementation of the Tetris game: https://github.com/SamTay/tetrisgotta-go-fast, a typing tutor: https://github.com/hot-leaf-juice/gotta-go-fasthaskell-player, anafplayfrontend: https://github.com/potomak/haskell-playermushu, anMPDclient: https://github.com/elaye/mushumatterhorn, a client for Mattermost: https://github.com/matterhorn-chat/matterhornviewprof, a GHC profile viewer: https://github.com/maoe/viewproftart, a mouse-driven ASCII art drawing program: https://github.com/jtdaugherty/tartsilly-joy, an interpreter for Joy: https://github.com/rootmos/silly-joyherms, a command-line tool for managing kitchen recipes: https://github.com/jackkiefer/hermspurebred, a mail user agent: https://github.com/purebred-mua/purebred2048Haskell, an implementation of the 2048 game: https://github.com/8Gitbrix/2048Haskellbhoogle, a Hoogle client: https://github.com/andrevdm/bhoogleclifm, a file manager: https://github.com/pasqu4le/clifm
Getting Started
Check out the many demo programs to get a feel for different aspects of the library:
$ cabal new-build -f demos
$ find dist-newstyle -type f -name \*-demo
To get started, see the user guide.
Documentation
Documentation for brick comes in a variety of forms:
- The official brick user guide
- Samuel Tay’s brick tutorial
- Haddock (all modules)
- Demo programs
- FAQ
Feature Overview
brick comes with a bunch of batteries included:
- Vertical and horizontal box layout widgets
- Basic single- and multi-line text editor widgets
- List widget
- Progress bar widget
- Simple dialog box widget
- Border-drawing widgets (put borders around or in between things)
- Generic scrollable viewports
- (And many more general-purpose layout control combinators)
Other killer features:
- Extensible widget-building API
- User-customizable attribute themes
- Type-safe, validated input form API (see the
Brick.Formsmodule) - Borders can be configured to automatically connect!
Brick-Users Discussion
The brick-users Google Group / e-mail list is a place to discuss
library changes, give feedback, and ask questions. You can subscribe at:
https://groups.google.com/group/brick-users
Status
There are some places were I have deliberately chosen to worry about
performance later for the sake of spending more time on the design
(and to wait on performance issues to arise first). brick is also
something of an experimental project of mine and some aspects of the
design involve trade-offs that might not be right for your application.
Brick is not intended to be all things to all people; rather, I want it
to provide a good foundation for building complex terminal interfaces
in a declarative style to take away specific headaches of building,
modifying, and working with such interfaces, all while seeing how far we
can get with a pure function to specify the interface.
brick exports an extension API that makes it possible to make your own
packages and widgets. If you use that, you’ll also be helping to test
whether the exported interface is usable and complete!
Reporting bugs
Please file bug reports as GitHub issues. For best results:
-
Include the versions of relevant software packages: your terminal emulator,
brick,ghc, andvtywill be the most important ones. -
Clearly describe the behavior you expected …
-
… and include a minimal demonstration program that exhibits the behavior you actually observed.
Contributing
If you decide to contribute, that’s great! Here are some guidelines you should consider to make submitting patches easier for all concerned:
- If you want to take on big things, talk to me first; let’s have a design/vision discussion before you start coding. Create a GitHub issue and we can use that as the place to hash things out.
- Please make changes consistent with the conventions I’ve used in the codebase.
- Please adjust or provide Haddock and/or user guide documentation relevant to any changes you make.
- New commits should be
-Wallclean. - Please do NOT include package version changes in your patches. Package version changes are only done at release time when the full scope of a release’s changes can be evaluated to determine the appropriate version change.