Flammarion GUI Toolkit

Overview

Flammarion is an easy-to-use library for displaying information that you might normally display to the command line in a slightly easier-to-access way.

It is not intended to be a full fledged application development toolkit. It is intended instead for small scripts where you just want to show some information or buttons without going through too much trouble.

Installation

First, you need to install electron or chrome and make sure it's in your path.

On OSX / Linux: To put electron in your path, you can npm install electron-prebuilt -g, see their github page
On Windows: currently only chrome works, but you don't need to worry about putting it in your path

Then you can install the gem:

gem install flammarion

or add it to your Gemfile.

Tutorial

The easiest way to use Flammarion, is similar to how you might use STDOUT:

require 'flammarion'
f = Flammarion::Engraving.new
f.puts "Hello World!"

It can even support standard console color codes: (Thanks to ansi_up!)

require 'colorized'
f.puts "This line will be red!".red
f.puts "This #{"word".colorize(:green)} will not be blue."

However, you can also do more advanced things. Say you want to show a table. Easy!

f.table(
  [%w[Number Squared Sqrt].map{|h| h.light_magenta}] + # Make the header a different color
  10.times.collect{|x| [x, x * x, Math.sqrt(x)]})

Or maybe you want to know where something is:

f.map("Boston, MA")

Maybe you even want to see both of those things at the same time!

f.pane("numberstuff").table([%w[Number Squared Sqrt].map{|h| h.light_magenta}] +
  10.times.collect{|x| [x, x * x, Math.sqrt(x)]})
f.pane("mapstuff").map("Big Ben")

If you need feedback, there's a simple callback mechanism for buttons and text boxes:

f.button("Click Here!!!") {f.puts "You clicked the button!"}
f.input("Placeholder > ") {|msg| f.puts "You wrote: #{msg['text'].light_magenta}"}

The api documetaion is available at http://zach-capalbo.github.io/flammarion/doc/Flammarion.html.

Screenshots / Samples

Message Composer with Address Book

f = Flammarion::Engraving.new
f.orientation = :horizontal
recipient = f.subpane("number").input("Phone Number")
text = f.input("Body", multiline:true)
f.button("Send") { send_message(recipient.to_s, text.to_s); f.status("Message Sent!")}
f.pane("contacts").puts("Contacts", replace:true)
icons = %w[thumbs-up meh-o bicycle gears star-o star] + [nil] * 5
30.times do |i|
  name = Faker::Name.name
  f.pane("contacts").button(name, right_icon:icons.sample, left_icon:icons.sample) do
    recipient = name
    f.subpane("number").replace(name)
  end
end

Rake Task Runner

f = Flammarion::Engraving.new(exit_on_disconnect:true)
f.title "frake #{Dir.pwd}"

def run(task)
  f2 = Flammarion::Engraving.new
  f2.title task
  f2.puts "Running #{task.light_magenta}"
  Open3.popen3(task) do |i,o,e,t|
    Thread.new {e.each_line{|l| f2.print l.red}}
    o.each_line {|l| f2.print l}
    f2.status t.value.success? ? "Done!".light_green : "Failed!".light_red
  end
end

f.markdown "# Rake Tasks: "
`rake -T`.each_line do |l|
  f.break
  parts = l.split("#")
  task = parts[0]
  desc = parts[1]
  f.puts desc
  f.button(task) do
    run(task)
  end
end

f.wait_until_closed

Tables

f = Flammerion::Engraving.new
f.orientation = :horizontal
f.table([["Id", "Name", "Address"].map{|h| h.light_magenta}] + 20.times.map do |i|
  [i, Faker::Name.name, Faker::Address.street_address]
end)
f.pane("sidebar").pane("side1").puts Faker::Hipster.paragraph.red
f.pane("sidebar").pane("side2").puts Faker::Hipster.paragraph.green

3.times { f.status(Faker::Hipster.sentence.light_green)}

Examples

There are a number of useful examples in the examples directory.

Bundled Packages

Flammarion is distributed with a bunch of useful tools to make everyone's life easier. They are:

caseywatts / flammarion