Examples

A few programs are provided with blessed to help interactively test the various API features, but also serve as examples of using blessed to develop applications.

These examples are not distributed with the package – they are only available in the github repository. You can retrieve them by cloning the repository, or simply downloading the “raw” file link.

editor.py

https://github.com/jquast/blessed/blob/master/bin/editor.py

This program demonstrates using the directional keys and noecho input mode. It acts as a (very dumb) fullscreen editor, with support for saving a file, as well as including a rudimentary line-editor.

keymatrix.py

https://github.com/jquast/blessed/blob/master/bin/keymatrix.py

This program displays a “gameboard” of all known special KEY_NAME constants. When the key is depressed, it is highlighted, as well as displaying the unicode sequence, integer code, and friendly-name of any key pressed.

on_resize.py

https://github.com/jquast/blessed/blob/master/bin/on_resize.py

This program installs a SIGWINCH signal handler, which detects screen resizes while also polling for input, displaying keypresses.

This demonstrates how a program can react to screen resize events.

progress_bar.py

https://github.com/jquast/blessed/blob/master/bin/progress_bar.py

This program demonstrates a simple progress bar. All text is written to stderr, to avoid the need to “flush” or emit newlines, and makes use of the move_x (hpa) capability to “overstrike” the display a scrolling progress bar.

tprint.py

https://github.com/jquast/blessed/blob/master/bin/tprint.py

This program demonstrates how users may customize FormattingString styles. Accepting a string style, such as “bold” or “bright_red” as the first argument, all subsequent arguments are displayed by the given style. This shows how a program could provide user-customizable compound formatting names to configure a program’s styling.

worms.py

https://github.com/jquast/blessed/blob/master/bin/worms.py

This program demonstrates how an interactive game could be made with blessed. It is similar to NIBBLES.BAS or “snake” of early mobile platforms.

resize.py

https://github.com/jquast/blessed/blob/master/bin/resize.py

This program demonstrates the get_location() method, behaving similar to resize(1) : set environment and terminal settings to current window size. The window size is determined by eliciting an answerback sequence from the connecting terminal emulator.

detect-multibyte.py

https://github.com/jquast/blessed/blob/master/bin/detect-multibyte.py

This program also demonstrates how the get_location() method can be used to reliably test whether the terminal emulator of the connecting client is capable of rendering multibyte characters as a single cell.