rich/docs/source/console.rst

Console API
===========

For complete control over terminal formatting, Rich offers a :class:`~rich.console.Console` class. Most applications will require a single Console instance, so you may want to create one at the module level or as an attribute of your top-level object. For example::

    from rich.console import Console
    console = Console()

The console object handles the mechanics of generating ANSI escape sequences for color and style. It will auto-detect the capabilities of the terminal and convert colors if necessary.


Attributes
----------

The console will auto-detect a number of properties required when rendering.

* :obj:`~rich.console.Console.size` is the current dimensions of the terminal (which may change if you resize the window).
* :obj:`~rich.console.Console.encoding` is the default encoding (typically "utf-8").
* :obj:`~rich.console.Console.is_terminal` is a boolean that indicates if the Console instance is writing to a terminal or not.
* :obj:`~rich.console.Console.color_system` is a string containing "standard", "256" or "truecolor", or ``None`` if not writing to a terminal.


Printing
--------

To write rich content to the terminal use the :meth:`~rich.console.Console.print` method. Rich will convert any object to a string via its (``__str__``) method and perform some simple syntax highlighting. It will also do pretty printing of any containers, such as dicts and lists. If you print a string it will render :ref:`console_markup`. Here are some examples::

    console.print([1, 2, 3])
    console.print("[blue underline]Looks like a link")
    console.print(locals())

You can also use :meth:`~rich.console.Console.print` to render objects that support the :ref:`protocol`, which includes Rich's built in objects such as :class:`~rich.text.Text`, :class:`~rich.table.Table`, and :class:`~rich.syntax.Syntax` -- or other custom objects.


Logging
-------

The :meth:`~rich.console.Console.log` methods offers the same capabilities as print, but adds some features useful for debugging a running application. Logging writes the current time in a column to the left, and the file and line where the method was called to a column on the right. Here's an example::

    >>> console.log("Hello, World!")

.. raw:: html

    <pre style="font-family:Menlo,'DejaVu Sans Mono',consolas,'Courier New',monospace"><span style="color: #7fbfbf">[16:32:08] </span>Hello, World!                                         <span style="color: #7f7f7f">&lt;stdin&gt;:1</span>
    </pre>

To help with debugging, the log() method has a ``log_locals`` parameter. If you set this to ``True``, Rich will display a table of local variables where the method was called.


Exporting
---------

The Console class can export anything written to it as either text or html. To enable exporting, first set ``record=True`` on the constructor. This tells Rich to save a copy of any data you ``print()`` or ``log()``. Here's an example::

    from rich.console import Console
    console = Console(record=True)

After you have written content, you can call :meth:`~rich.console.Console.export_text` or :meth:`~rich.console.Console.export_html` to get the console output as a string. You can also call :meth:`~rich.console.Console.save_text` or :meth:`~rich.console.Console.save_html` to write the contents directly to disk.

For examples of the html output generated by Rich Console, see :ref:`appendix-colors`.