Spinners¶

Spinners let you tell the user that something is happening while you're processing. There are 3 basic ways to use a spinner:

Instantiating a spinner and then using .start() and .stop() on your object.
Using a context manager (with cli.spinner(...):)
Decorate a function (@cli.spinner(...))

For full details see the cli.spinner api reference.

Adding a Spinner¶

If you'd like to create your own spinner animation you can do that. First you should define a dictionary with two keys, interval and frames:

my_spinner = {
    'interval': 100,  # How many ms to display each frame
    'frames': ['-', '\\', '|', '/']
}

You can use this in one of two ways- by passing it directly to cli.spinner() or by adding it to the list of available spinners using cli.add_spinner().

Example: Using a custom spinner directly¶

my_spinner = {
    'interval': 100,  # How many ms to display each frame
    'frames': ['-', '\\', '|', '/']
}

with cli.spinner(text='Loading', spinner=my_spinner):
    time.sleep(10)

Example: Adding a custom spinner¶

my_spinner = {
    'interval': 100,  # How many ms to display each frame
    'frames': ['-', '\\', '|', '/']
}
cli.add_spinner('my_twirl', my_spinner)

with cli.spinner(text='Loading', spinner='my_twirl'):
    time.sleep(10)

Example: Instantiating a Spinner¶

spinner = cli.spinner(text='Loading', spinner='dots')
spinner.start()

# Do something here

spinner.stop()

Example: Using a Context Manager¶

with cli.spinner(text='Loading', spinner='dots'):
    # Do something here

Example: Decorating a Function¶

@cli.spinner(text='Loading', spinner='dots')
def long_running_function():
    # Do something here