CLI chat interface, written in python.

[stuck sun]

Repo: https://github.com/jckirton/CLImudChat

I am working on making a CLI chat interface, written entirely in python.

Current Features

• Guided, user-friendly setup process (except for windows, you can figure that stuff out yourself).
• Chat fetching & storage.
• Chat message rendering (complete with colors and locally-timed timestamps).
• "monitoring" mode, which fetches new chats every 2 seconds.
• Sender and channel filters for monitoring mode.
  • arrays accepted, format when inputting is thing1,thing2.
  • tell and tells are valid inputs for the channel filter, filtering by tells.
• CLI direct input on viewChats.py script run.
  • Same syntax for filters, syntax for this form of input is [PYTHON SCRIPT CALL OR WHATEVER] user sender_filter channel_filter.
  • Inputting of filters is not necessary, but you can give it none, and it will be the equivalent of not putting it in.

TODO

• Allow sending of messages while also updating and displaying new chats.
• Better message storage (currently just one big JSON file... Should be fine given it doesn't get over a couple GB).
• An actual interface.
• Filtering by timestamp/time range.
• Finishing and packaging.

Some Other Words

Please try it out and give me some thoughts! It's still in early-ish development, and not complete.

It should be usable by anyone (if the setup process works/is done right), and can take in historical message data given it's in the correct format (which is just the same format as when you make a read call to the API).

[coarse crown]

btw I was briefly looking into the "sending of messages while also updating" issue in Python and I didn't make any progress 😭
in Rust I found one library that lets me do it, but it's not very flexible (e.g. when you send a message the prompt + input stays there in the history, so you see your message twice)
I fear we need to just use curses or something ?

[stuck sun]

Curses?

Also that double-message thing is fine.

[coarse crown]

old low-level TUI library IIUC

[stuck sun]

Ah.

[covert obsidian]

It's a pain no matter how you tackle it. Console's like to either take info in, or spit info out. We used a library for node that was specifically meant to work around that, and even then the cursor would go a lil wonky

A way to do it, though, is to look for some sort of keystroke combo, and buffer any incoming messages until the user is done typing

[coarse crown]

I wonder if my rust library is just outputting deletes and then re-outputting my prompt whenever I write new chats

also sorry don't want to derail your post, but I was also trying to solve this issue before 😄

[stuck sun]

A multi-window approach would probably be fine.

[covert obsidian]

also an option, I'm just a one monitor pleb so I try to avoid extra windows :p