mortuusars / mterminal.wpf

Terminal for WPF apps that displays messages and allows executing defined commands.

MTerminal provides a "console" for the WPF apps.

Terminal is a simple WPF window that can display text and has an input box for commands. Can be used as more user-friendly Command-Line Interface for simple apps or as a convenient debug tool for your WPF app.

Features:

• Similar to the System.Console
• Can be used as target output of a Console
• Supports colored text
• Autocomplete for the commands
• Customizable style of the window
• Has two built-in commands:
  • help: shows information about available commands
  • clear: clears the screen

Basic usage:

// Show the Terminal window:
Terminal.Show();

//Write a colored message to the Terminal:
Terminal.WriteLine("Hello World!", Colors.LightBlue);

Commands overview:

Basic working command consists of two elements:

• Command name/ID (this is what typed to invoke it)
• Action<string[]> - code that will be executed when command is invoked.

Command also has some additional properties but they are not essential.

Arguments

When command is invoked - all text that was typed after a command id will be passed to the command as an argument. Args work as the regular app args do:

• It's a array of strings separated by spaces
• Text encased in quotes counts as 1 argument

Adding a command:

Terminal.Commands.Add(new TerminalCommand("exit", "Exits the app", (args) => App.Shutdown()));

Read functionality:

Terminal supports Read, ReadLine and ReadKey. They work as expected:

• Read returns next char that is typed in by user;
• ReadLine waits for the return key, after which it returns text that was inputed;
• ReadKey returns a key that was pressed;

But - they are implemented as Tasks, which means to use it properly they should be awaited.

❗Warning: if called from the UI thread with waiting (such as GetAwaiter().GetResult()) they will hang the app in a deadlock, as the UI thread is waiting and cannot process user input.

mterminal.wpf's Issues

Crash when trying to get last inputted command from history when no commands were entered.