Java TUI

Library for text-based user interfaces. It's main purpose is to alleviate boilerplate code regarding input from stdin.

Goals

Java is a verbose language. When you want to deal with user interfaces, there is a lot of boilerplate code you have to write. This library means to alleviate some of that when you want to have a text-based user interface. Java TUI is not intended to be a full-fledged framework for text-based user interfaces, but rather solve a particular small set of problems, mainly handling input from stdin.

Installation

This is a library, not a stand-alone application. Include this in your own application.

To make use of this library, please do the following:

Make sure you meet the prerequisites:
- Java 7 or later
Go to the releases page and find the specific version you want.
Download java-tui-x.x.x.jar and place it in your own application's classpath.
If you want Javadoc, download java-tui-x.x.x-javadoc.jar.
- Please refer to your particular IDE on how to attach that to the previous JAR file you downloaded.
- If you're not using an IDE, you can unpack the JAR file and browse the Javadoc in a web browser.

Build from source

Make sure you meet the prerequisites:
- Java 7 or later
Go to the releases page and find the specific version you want.
Download java-tui-x.x.x-sources.jar and unpack it.
In that package, along with the source files you'll find the files build.xml and build.properties. With those, you can build the library (using Apache ANT or similar tools).

Usage

In this library, there are two classes: Terminal and UnclosableInputStream. With Terminal, you can write to standard output and read from standard input. Terminal makes use of UnclosableInputStream internally. An example:

import nu.olivertwistor.java.tui.Terminal;

class App
{
    public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception
    {
        Terminal.writeLine("Welcome to this app!");
        Terminal.write("This is the beginning of one line. ");
        Terminal.writeLine("This is continuing on that line.");

        final int age = Terminal.readInt("Please state your age: ");
        Terminal.write("Your age is ");
        Terminal.writeLine(age);
    }
}

This will produce the following output:

Welcome to this app!
This is the beginning of one line. This is continuing on that line.
Please state your age: 36
Your age is 36

The other class, UnclosableInputStream provides an InputStream that doesn't automatically close itself after use. An example:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;

import nu.olivertwistor.java.tui.UnclosableInputStream;

class App
{
    public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception
    {
        // Change the system input stream to prevent it closing.
        System.setIn(new UnclosableInputStream(System.in));

        try (final BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(
                new InputStreamReader(System.in, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)))
        {
            System.out.println(br.readLine());
        }
        finally
        {
            // Reset the system input stream.
            System.setIn(System.in);
        }
    }
}

Licenses