inquire
A Rust library for building interactive, customizable prompts in terminal applications.
What is inquire?
Inquire is a Rust library for building rich, interactive command-line prompts. It provides a collection of prompt types—such as Text, Select, MultiSelect, DateSelect, Confirm, Password, Editor, and CustomType—to gather user input, making CLI applications more user-friendly and feature-rich. It solves the problem of creating intuitive terminal interfaces with minimal complexity while offering extensive customization.
Rust developers building command-line applications that require interactive user input, such as configuration wizards, data entry tools, or interactive scripts. It is particularly suited for those needing cross-platform support and fine-grained control over prompt behavior and styling.
Developers choose Inquire for its type-safe API, sensible defaults, and deep customization options, including configurable backends (crossterm, termion, console), validation, theming, and autocompletion. Its cross-platform support and focus on user experience without unnecessary complexity set it apart from simpler prompt libraries.
Overview
A Rust library for building interactive prompts
Use Cases
Best For
- Building interactive CLI wizards with multiple prompt types like text, selection, and confirmation.
- Creating cross-platform terminal applications that require consistent behavior on UNIX and Windows systems.
- Implementing secure password input with toggleable display modes and confirmation flows.
- Developing tools that need date selection via an interactive calendar (using the date feature).
- Gathering structured user input with custom parsing and validation, such as numbers or UUIDs.
- Designing accessible terminal interfaces with customizable color themes and rendering configurations.
Not Ideal For
- Non-interactive batch jobs or headless environments without a TTY, where user input is impossible.
- GUI or web-based applications requiring graphical input dialogs instead of terminal prompts.
- Projects with strict dependency constraints that avoid additional crates like chrono for date features.
- Simple CLI scripts where basic stdin reading suffices, and library overhead is unnecessary.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Offers multiple prompt types including Text, Select, MultiSelect, DateSelect, Confirm, Password, Editor, and CustomType, as listed in the README's key features.
Works on UNIX and Windows terminals via configurable backends like crossterm, termion, and console, ensuring consistent behavior across systems.
Provides fine-grained control over rendering themes, validation, formatting, autocompletion, and scoring, with examples like custom validators and formatters in the documentation.
Built with Rust's type system, offering sensible defaults and standardized error handling using thiserror, as mentioned in the philosophy section.
Cons
Some prompts like DateSelect and Editor are behind feature flags, requiring additional dependencies and complicating setup for those features.
Fails in non-TTY environments with a 'NotTTY' error, limiting use in automated or headless scenarios where terminal interaction isn't available.
Certain prompts like Select do not support custom validators, restricting input validation for selection-based inputs, as noted in the README.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
ratatui-org/ratatuiA Rust crate for cooking up terminal user interfaces (TUIs) 👨🍳🐀 https://ratatui.rs
clap-rsA full featured, fast Command Line Argument Parser for Rust
indicatifA command line progress reporting library for Rust
CursiveA Text User Interface library for the Rust programming language
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