Somewhere in the middle of Tooting with Python, I mentioned I how I get Rich output into a post. That approach was a little clumsy though. I want to run my code and paste its output into whatever draft I’m editing.
So I’ll figure that one out now.
What are we printing?
How about a Table of the most popular pages on my site? I use Plausible for stats, and I’ve been meaning to play with their API. But I’m here to talk about Rich, not Plausible. Let’s use a static copy of API results so everyone’s using the same data.
import richfrom rich.table import Table
STATS = { "results": [ { "page": "/post/2017/11/drawing-grids-with-python-and-pillow/", "visitors": 1114, }, {"page": "/post/2017/01/cinnamon-screenshot-shortcuts/", "visitors": 580}, {"page": "/", "visitors": 458}, { "page": "/post/2014/06/what-is-build-essentials-for-opensuse/", "visitors": 340, }, {"page": "/config/emacs/doom/", "visitors": 303}, {"page": "/post/2020/06/csv-and-data-tables-in-hugo/", "visitors": 293}, {"page": "/post/2019/05/kitty-terminal/", "visitors": 265}, { "page": "/post/2018/02/setting-task-dependencies-in-taskwarrior/", "visitors": 263, }, {"page": "/post/2019/02/taskwarrior-projects/", "visitors": 260}, { "page": "/post/2019/01/circular-grids-with-python-and-pillow/", "visitors": 242, }, ]}
def build_stats_table(stats): """Construct a Rich Table from site traffic breakdown."""
table = Table(title="Plausible.io Traffic Breakdown") table.add_column("Page") table.add_column("Visitors", justify="right", style="green")
for entry in stats["results"]: table.add_row(entry["page"], "{:,}".format(entry["visitors"]))
return table
def show_stats(): """Display Plausible's breakdown of site traffic."""
table = build_stats_table(STATS) rich.print(table)
if __name__ == "__main__": show_stats()Here’s a screenshot, so you know what this produces in my own terminal.
Okay. Now let’s start talking about exporting output.
xclip is usually good enough
This post focuses on the “blog writing and pretty reports” situations. For
everyday sharing, all I need is a legibly formatted data dump. xclip works for
those situations.
python showstats.py | xclipI don’t see anything on my screen, of course, because I piped everything to
xclip. But when I paste from the clipboard:
Plausible.io Traffic Breakdown┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓┃ Page ┃ Visitors ┃┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩│ /post/2017/11/drawing-grids-with-python-and-pillow/ │ 1,114 ││ /post/2017/01/cinnamon-screenshot-shortcuts/ │ 580 ││ / │ 458 ││ /post/2014/06/what-is-build-essentials-for-opensuse/ │ 340 ││ /config/emacs/doom/ │ 303 ││ /post/2020/06/csv-and-data-tables-in-hugo/ │ 293 ││ /post/2019/05/kitty-terminal/ │ 265 ││ /post/2018/02/setting-task-dependencies-in-taskwarrior/ │ 263 ││ /post/2019/02/taskwarrior-projects/ │ 260 ││ /post/2019/01/circular-grids-with-python-and-pillow/ │ 242 │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────┘xclip preserves the basic shape of my output. I see a table. The Visitors
column is right-aligned. The title is centered. But it loses some of the finer
formatting bits: bold, italicization, color.
Let’s pull that clipboard management into the script with Al Sweigart’s Pyperclip library.
Let Rich and Pyperclip handle the clipboard
Pyperclip gives our code access to the system clipboard, letting us copy and
paste from Python. The Rich Console can capture the
characters it would have printed, and hand them to us when needed. Sounds like
a great team.
import pyperclipfrom rich.console import ConsoleI set up Pyperclip and create a local Console to handle capturing.
def show_stats(stats): """Display Plausible's breakdown of site traffic."""
table = build_stats_table(stats) pyperclip.set_clipboard("xclip") console = Console()
with console.capture() as capture: console.print(table)
text_output = capture.get() pyperclip.copy(text_output) print(text_output)I need to tell Pyperclip about xclip or it gets a bit confused on WSL.
Also, since I captured the output, I need to print it myself. Why print
instead of rich.print or console.print?
Let me answer that question by pasting the contents of my clipboard:
[3m Plausible.io Traffic Breakdown [0m┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓┃[1m [0m[1mPage [0m[1m [0m┃[1m [0m[1mVisitors[0m[1m [0m┃┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩│ /post/2017/11/drawing-grids-with-python-and-pillow/ │[32m [0m[32m 1114[0m[32m [0m││ /post/2017/01/cinnamon-screenshot-shortcuts/ │[32m [0m[32m 580[0m[32m [0m││ / │[32m [0m[32m 458[0m[32m [0m││ /post/2014/06/what-is-build-essentials-for-opensuse/ │[32m [0m[32m 340[0m[32m [0m││ /config/emacs/doom/ │[32m [0m[32m 303[0m[32m [0m││ /post/2020/06/csv-and-data-tables-in-hugo/ │[32m [0m[32m 293[0m[32m [0m││ /post/2019/05/kitty-terminal/ │[32m [0m[32m 265[0m[32m [0m││ /post/2018/02/setting-task-dependencies-in-taskwarrior/ │[32m [0m[32m 263[0m[32m [0m││ /post/2019/02/taskwarrior-projects/ │[32m [0m[32m 260[0m[32m [0m││ /post/2019/01/circular-grids-with-python-and-pillow/ │[32m [0m[32m 242[0m[32m [0m│└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────┘/* markdownlint-disable-next-line MD053 */ [escape-codes]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code
Uh. Oops? console captured exactly what it would have printed, including
terminal [escape codes][escape-codes].
Rich supports [exporting][console-export] output beyond a raw dump, though.
Let Rich get you some HTML
A Console created with the record option enabled remembers everything it
prints. You can get export your copy at any point. The
export_text method provides a copy with minimal formatting,
while export_html produces HTML pages. That’s for sure
something I can paste into my post source. Nice!
One slight wrinkle. Unless you tell it otherwise, export_html produces a
complete HTML file — with <head>, <body>, and even a <style> section.
All I want is the <pre>...</pre> describing my output.
Fortunately, export_html also lets us tell it exactly what we want:
code_formatlets me specify the HTML fragment to generate- turn on
inline_stylesto directly embed style rules; handy if I don’t have my own CSS definitions for Rich-specific classes
Let’s make some HTML for Pyperclip to copy.
def show_stats(): """Display Plausible's breakdown of site traffic."""
# print the stats table = build_stats_table(STATS) console = Console(record=True) console.print(table)
# copy the stats pyperclip.set_clipboard("xclip") exported_html = console.export_html( inline_styles=True, code_format="<pre>{code}</pre>" ) pyperclip.copy(exported_html)What do the contents of my clipboard look like now?
Plausible.io Traffic Breakdown
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Page ┃ Visitors ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ /post/2017/11/drawing-grids-with-python-and-pillow/ │ 1,114 │
│ /post/2017/01/cinnamon-screenshot-shortcuts/ │ 580 │
│ / │ 458 │
│ /post/2014/06/what-is-build-essentials-for-opensuse/ │ 340 │
│ /config/emacs/doom/ │ 303 │
│ /post/2020/06/csv-and-data-tables-in-hugo/ │ 293 │
│ /post/2019/05/kitty-terminal/ │ 265 │
│ /post/2018/02/setting-task-dependencies-in-taskwarrior/ │ 263 │
│ /post/2019/02/taskwarrior-projects/ │ 260 │
│ /post/2019/01/circular-grids-with-python-and-pillow/ │ 242 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────┘
That works well enough for a blog post!
If you’re curious about the exported HTML, here’s a chunk of it:
<pre><span style="font-style: italic"> Plausible.io Traffic Breakdown </span> ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃<span style="font-weight: bold"> Page </span>┃<span style="font-weight: bold"> Visitors </span>┃ ┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩ │ /post/2017/11/drawing-grids-with-python-and-pillow/ │<span style="color: #008000; text-decoration-color: #008000"> 1,114 </span>│ ... │ /post/2019/01/circular-grids-with-python-and-pillow/ │<span style="color: #008000; text-decoration-color: #008000"> 242 </span>│ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────┘ </pre>Anyways, this was just another thing I wanted to get down before I forgot again.
What else?
There are a few more pieces that tie it into my particular workflow, but this covers what you’d need to export output from your own Rich programs for easy blogging or information sharing.
/* markdownlint-disable-next-line MD053 */ [console-export]: https://rich.readthedocs.io/en/stable/console.html#exporting
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