Intuitive

Warning

This crate currently does not work. (Hooks don't work, rendering is synchronous, children have a compile-time fixed number of children, and other issues). It's unmaintained at the moment but I hope to one day pick this idea back up.

docs.rs Documentation

Intuitive is a component-based library for creating text-based user interfaces (TUIs) easily.

It is heavily inspired by React and SwiftUI, containing features that resemble functional components, hooks, and a (mostly) declarative DSL.

Refer to the Getting Started documentation for a detailed guide on how to get started with Intuitive. Alternatively, head over to the examples directory to see some demo applications.

Design

The main focus of Intuitive is to simplify the implementation of section-based TUIs, such as lazygit's, even at the slight expense of performance. Intuitive attempts to make it easy to write reusable TUI components that

• encapsulate logic around handling state and key events
• have complex layouts
• are easy to read

For example, a complex layout with an input box:

use intuitive::{
  component,
  components::{stack::Flex::*, HStack, Section, Text, VStack},
  error::Result,
  on_key, render,
  state::use_state,
  terminal::Terminal,
};

#[component(Root)]
fn render() {
  let text = use_state(|| String::new());

  let on_key = on_key! { [text]
    KeyEvent { code: Char(c), .. } => text.mutate(|text| text.push(c)),
    KeyEvent { code: Backspace, .. } => text.mutate(|text| text.pop()),
    KeyEvent { code: Esc, .. } => event::quit(),
  };

  render! {
    VStack(flex: [Block(3), Grow(1)], on_key) {
      Section(title: "Input") {
        Text(text: text.get())
      }

      HStack(flex: [1, 2, 3]) {
        Section(title: "Column 1")
        Section(title: "Column 2")
        Section(title: "Column 3")
      }
    }
  }
}

fn main() -> Result<()> {
  Terminal::new(Root::new())?.run()
}

And the output would look like this:

Disclaimer

Intuitive is closer to a proof-of-concept than to a crate that's ready for prime-time use. There may also be some bugs in the library of components, please raise an issue if you find any. Furthermore, since a large and complex application has yet to be built using Intuitive, it is not a guarantee that it does not have some major flaw making such development difficult.