Genro Textual

GitHub

A declarative TUI framework that builds terminal interfaces from Bag structures using Textual as the rendering engine.

The Idea

Instead of writing imperative widget code, you describe your UI in a main method — a series of builder calls that create a Bag structure. The framework builds this structure and renders it as a Textual application.

from genro_textual import TextualApp

class MyApp(TextualApp):
    def main(self, source):
        source.binding(key="q", action="quit", description="Quit")
        source.static("^greeting")
        source.input(value="^form.name", placeholder="Your name")

    def store(self, data):
        data["greeting"] = "Hello, World!"
        data["form.name"] = ""

if __name__ == "__main__":
    MyApp().run()

Key Concepts

  • main() — Declare your UI structure with builder calls

  • Bag-driven — All state lives in Bag structures (data, source, built)

  • Reactive binding — ^pointer syntax binds widgets to data paths

  • Bidirectional — Input widgets write back to data on blur

  • CSS in main — Inline stylesheets via source.css()

  • Puppeteer/Puppet — TextualApp (logic) drives LiveApp (rendering)

Architecture

        graph LR
    R[main] --> S[Source Bag]
    S --> B[Build]
    B --> BB[Built Bag]
    BB --> RE[Renderer]
    RE --> W[Widget Tree]
    D[Data Bag] -.->|binding| BB
    W -.->|blur/change| D

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