rich.status: a Spinner for Better CLI UX

Zettel#132

zettelkasten
Published

2023-10-14

I really should read the documentation of the Rich library in detail… I just found another gem: the rich.status module, which provides a spinner and status message while a task is being processed. This visual feedback informs the user that the application is actively working on a task, contributing to a more engaging and informative user interaction.

Code Example

import asyncio
import random
from rich.console import Console
from rich.status import Status

async def simulated_task():
    # Simulate a task that may raise an error
    await asyncio.sleep(2)
    if random.random() < 0.5:  # 50% chance of error
        raise ValueError("An error occurred")
    await asyncio.sleep(2)

async def main():
    encountered_error = False
    console = Console()
    with console.status("[bold cyan]Processing...") as status:
        try:
            await simulated_task()
            status.update("[bold green]Success!")
        except ValueError as error:
            status.update(f"[bold red]{error}")
            encountered_error = True
        await asyncio.sleep(2)  # Simulate additional processing
        console.print(
            "Task complete" if not encountered_error else "Task encountered an error"
        )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Spinner Styles

To view all the predefined spinner style names along with their visual representation, run the following command in your terminal:

python -m rich.spinner

Make sure you have the Rich library installed in your virtual environment (python -m pip install rich).

References