PixelPrompt

documentation

PixelPrompt Demo

PixelPrompt is a Terminal UI (TUI) framework for Dart, inspired by Flutter’s widget-driven architecture.
It brings Dart’s familiar, declarative UI style to the command line, letting you build interactive, styled terminal applications with layouts, stateful components, and keyboard/mouse events.

Note:
The API is experimental and may break between versions.
The pub.dev package may lag behind the latest features on main.

Why PixelPrompt?

Dart has proven itself in the GUI world (via Flutter), but building TUIs often requires low-level terminal handling or foreign libraries.
PixelPrompt bridges that gap by offering:

  • A component-based architecture (similar to Flutter widgets).
  • Built-in layouts, stateful components, keyboard & mouse input.
  • Customizable styling (colors, padding, margin, borders).
  • Extensible API via BuilableComponent and StatefulComponent.
  • Cross-platform: supports Linux, macOS, and Windows terminals.

Installation

From pub.dev (may lag behind main):

dependencies:
  pixel_prompt: ^0.1.3

or using pub add

dart pub add pixel_prompt

From GitHub (latest, potentially unstable):

dependencies:
  pixel_prompt:
    git:
      url: https://github.com/primequantuM4/pixel_prompt.git
      ref: main

Then run:

dart pub get

Quick Start - Hello World

import 'package:pixel_prompt/pixel_prompt.dart';

void main() {
  App(
    children: [
      TextComponent(
        "Hello, PixelPrompt!",
        // style is optional
        style: TextComponentStyle(
          // foreground color for the text
          color: ColorRGB(200, 200, 200),
          // background color for the text
          bgColor: ColorRGB(30, 30, 30),
          padding: EdgeInsets.symmetric(horizontal: 2, vertical: 1),
        ),
      ),
    ],
  ).run();
}

Run it:

dart run hello_world.dart

Examples

Counter Demo

Stopwatch Demo

  • Counter App — demonstrates stateful components and buttons.
  • Stopwatch App — demonstrates timers and dynamic updates.

Roadmap

  • Optimizations and verbosity for layout.
  • Additional Components (menus, tables, textfield area).
  • Visual Debugger

Contributing

Contributions are welcome and appreciated!

  1. Fork the repo and clone it.
  2. Install dependencies with:
dart pub get
  1. Run tests:
dart test
  1. Open a PR

License

MIT

Libraries

common/response_input
components/border_style
components/button_component
components/checkbox
components/checkbox_list
components/colors
components/column
components/font_style
components/row
components/text_component
components/text_component_style
components/text_field_component
core/app
core/axis
core/buffer_cell
core/buildable_component
core/canvas_buffer
core/component
core/component_instance
core/component_state
core/context
core/edge_insets
core/interactable_component_instance
core/interactable_registry
core/parent_component_instance
core/position
core/rect
core/size
core/stateful_component
events/input_event
handler/input_handler
layout_engine/layout_engine
layout_engine/positioned_component
logger/logger
manager/command_mode_handler
manager/component_input_handler
manager/focus_manager
manager/input_dispatcher
manager/input_manager
manager/input_registry
pixel_prompt
renderer/border_renderer
renderer/render_manager
terminal/terminal_functions
terminal/terminal_interpreter