FelipeEmos
commented
3 years ago @txoof , I'm also new to these concepts, but I think I understand what you mean. First of all, you don't need your while loop to do some basic interactions with the menu. You can get the "return" value from menu options just by calling a function that handles more than just the operation. I've modified your code to show you what I mean. In this example, the function "add_and_show" could do much more than just a display, you can handle more complex operations if you want. If you need to store a state, the best practice would be to create a separate class just for dealing with your states :)
from consolemenu import *
from consolemenu.items import *
import threading
import logging
logging.getLogger(__name__)
logging.basicConfig(filename='test.log', level=logging.DEBUG,
format='%(asctime)s:%(levelname)s:%(message)s')
def add(number):
return number+number
def add_and_show(number):
result = add(number)
menu.subtitle = f"Your result: {result}"
menu.screen.clear()
menu.draw()
menu = ConsoleMenu('Title')
item = MenuItem('Item one')
item_two = MenuItem('Item Two')
func = FunctionItem('add numbers', add_and_show, [5])
menu.append_item(item)
menu.append_item(item_two)
menu.append_item(func)
logging.debug('starting up')
menu.start()
menu.join()Sometimes this is not enough. When dealing with UI, it's not a good idea to keep operations and display in the same thread... Especially if the operation takes a long time to complete. Bear in mind that every time you want to pass a function (heavy in computation) for a UI item to call, it's best to do it in another thread. It will look something like this:
t1 = threading.Thread(target=calculate_PI)
item = FunctionItem('calculate PI', calculate_PI.start, [])
menu.append(item)
menu.start()
menu.join()
t1.join()
Fixing your code
I'll show you the way to do your "while loop" properly. In your original code, the interface is never displayed to the user because you need to join the menu thread. My solution is to start a different thread before joining the menu's one. The following code is just an example... if the user is typing an input while we refresh the page, things won't work well.
from consolemenu import *
from consolemenu.items import *
import logging, time, threading
logging.getLogger(__name__)
logging.basicConfig(filename='test.log', level=logging.DEBUG,
format='%(asctime)s:%(levelname)s:%(message)s')
def add(number):
return number+number
def add_and_show(number):
result = add(number)
menu.subtitle = f"Your result: {result}"
menu.screen.clear()
menu.draw()
menu = ConsoleMenu('Title')
item = MenuItem('Item one')
item_two = MenuItem('Item Two')
func = FunctionItem('add numbers', add_and_show, [5])
menu.append_item(item)
menu.append_item(item_two)
menu.append_item(func)
logging.debug('starting up')
menu.start()
def listen_menu():
counter = 1
while(not menu.is_alive()):
logging.debug(f'waiting {counter}...\n')
time.sleep(1)
counter += 1
while(menu.is_alive()):
logging.debug(f'running {counter}...\n')
time.sleep(1)
counter += 1
if(counter > 10):
menu.subtitle = f"Changed the subtitle! Counter={counter}"
# This messes up with user input! Just an example
menu.screen.clear()
menu.draw()
logging.debug(f'Finished at {counter}...\n')
t1 = threading.Thread(target=listen_menu)
t1.start()
menu.join()
t1.join()I hoped it helped ;)
For those who want to remember (or learn) threads in python, here is the best teacher on the web explaining it very well: Python Threading Tutorial by Corey Schafer
txoof
I can see that this is based on the python-curses module. I think that console-menu launches something of a daemon thread that runs in the background continually grabbing user input.
I've never worked with something like this. Can you provide a simple example that shows how to interact with the running menu? How do I get the return values from executed functions or grab the most recent selection?
I cobbled together this example based on what I could piece together from the examples and docs, but I'm not sure where to go from here: