Remedy

Remedy is a console interaction framework along the lines of Curses written in pure Ruby. It is modular, making it easy to use what you need and ignore the rest.

If you have any suggestions or find any bugs, drop them in GitHub/issues so I can keep track of them. Thanks!

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

  gem 'remedy'

If you're only going to use part of Remedy, you can tell Bundler to not automatically require the whole thing:

  gem 'remedy', require: false

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install remedy

Remedy makes a few different classes and modules available to allow straight forward half-duplex communication with users via the console.

There are objects for input as well as output, including low level console keystroke reads and screen drawing.

The Interaction object wraps raw keyboard reads and streamlines some aspects of accepting keyboard input.

For instance to get a keypress from the terminal and display it:

  include Remedy
  user_input = Interaction.new

  user_input.loop do |key|
    puts key
  end

Viewport is the object that draws on your screen, you can give it any compatible Remedy::Partial object, or something that responds like one.

  include Remedy
  joke = Content.new
  joke << "Q: What's the difference between a duck?"
  joke << "A: Purple, because ice cream has no bones!"

  screen = Viewport.new
  screen.draw joke

Content in Remedy::Partials will be truncated as needed to accommodate the header and footer and the dimensions of the console. You can also specify the cursor/scroll position of the content being drawn, and when specifying headers or footers, you must.

  include Remedy
  title = Partial.new
  title << "Someone Said These Were Good"

  jokes = Content.new
  jokes << %q{1. A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says: 'Ugh, that's the ugliest baby I've ever seen!' The woman walks to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: 'The driver just insulted me!' The man says: 'You go up there and tell him off. Go on, I'll hold your monkey for you.'}
  jokes << %q{2. I went to the zoo the other day, there was only one dog in it, it was a shitzu.}

  disclaimer = Partial.new
  disclaimer << "According to a survey they were funny. I didn't make them."

  screen = Viewport.new
  screen.draw jokes, Size.new(0,0), title, disclaimer

If you want easy access to some lower level console commands, you can use Console.

The most interesting function in my opinion is the callback that gets triggered when the user resizes the console window.

  include Remedy

  screen = Viewport.new

  Console.set_console_resized_hook! do |size|
    notice = Partial.new
    notice << "You just resized your screen!\n\nNew size:"
    notice << size
    screen.draw notice
  end

Remedy was originally written for my own console-based game. Remedy was extracted from it and open-sourced and it has lived on.

Here are some projects that use Remedy:

• A screenreader-friendly code editor for blind and visually impaired programmers: Viper
• The Official ElasticSearch Ruby Connector
• A multiplayer Yahtzee for web and console: YahtzeeGame
• Twitter/RSS/Facebook reader: noizee

Check them out!

The examples directory has a couple of running implementations to get you started!

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request