Dialogs

Prompt_toolkit ships with a high level API for displaying dialogs, similar to the Whiptail program, but in pure Python.

Message box

Use the message_dialog() function to display a simple message box. For instance:

from prompt_toolkit.shortcuts import message_dialog

message_dialog(
    title='Example dialog window',
    text='Do you want to continue?\nPress ENTER to quit.')
../_images/messagebox.png

Input box

The input_dialog() function can display an input box. It will return the user input as a string.

from prompt_toolkit.shortcuts import input_dialog

text = input_dialog(
    title='Input dialog example',
    text='Please type your name:')
../_images/inputbox.png

The password=True option can be passed to the input_dialog() function to turn this into a password input box.

Yes/No confirmation dialog

The yes_no_dialog() function displays a yes/no confirmation dialog. It will return a boolean according to the selection.

from prompt_toolkit.shortcuts import yes_no_dialog

result = yes_no_dialog(
    title='Yes/No dialog example',
    text='Do you want to confirm?')
../_images/confirm.png

Button dialog

The button_dialog() function displays a dialog with choices offered as buttons. Buttons are indicated as a list of tuples, each providing the label (first) and return value if clicked (second).

from prompt_toolkit.shortcuts import button_dialog

result = button_dialog(
    title='Button dialog example',
    text='Do you want to confirm?',
    buttons=[
        ('Yes', True),
        ('No', False),
        ('Maybe...', None)
    ],
)
../_images/button.png

Styling of dialogs

A custom Style instance can be passed to all dialogs to override the default style. Also, text can be styled by passing an HTML object.

from prompt_toolkit.formatted_text import HTML
from prompt_toolkit.shortcuts import message_dialog
from prompt_toolkit.styles import Style

example_style = Style.from_dict({
    'dialog':             'bg:#88ff88',
    'dialog frame-label': 'bg:#ffffff #000000',
    'dialog.body':        'bg:#000000 #00ff00',
    'dialog shadow':      'bg:#00aa00',
})

message_dialog(
    title=HTML('<style bg="blue" fg="white">Styled</style> '
               '<style fg="ansired">dialog</style> window'),
    text='Do you want to continue?\nPress ENTER to quit.',
    style=example_style)
../_images/styled.png