Python Inquirer

Warnings

• breaking Python 3.8 is no longer supported. Users on Python 3.8 will need to upgrade their Python version to 3.9.2 or higher, or stick to an older `inquirer` version (<=3.4.0).
  Fix: Upgrade Python to 3.9.2 or newer, or downgrade `inquirer` to 3.4.0 or earlier.
• breaking The `normalize_to_absolute_path` argument has been removed from the `inquirer.Path` question type.
  Fix: Review code using `inquirer.Path` and remove the `normalize_to_absolute_path` argument. Adjust path handling logic if absolute paths were previously relied upon through this argument.
• gotcha Validation functions for questions must accept two arguments: `(answers, current)`, where `answers` is a dictionary of previously collected responses and `current` is the input for the current question. Providing only one argument (e.g., `lambda current: ...`) will cause validation to always fail, as exceptions are caught and treated as validation errors.
  Fix: Ensure your validation lambda or function has the signature `def validate_func(answers, current):` even if `answers` is not used. Return `True` for success, or raise `inquirer.errors.ValidationError('', reason='Your custom message')` for a custom error.
• gotcha Users often encounter `ModuleNotFoundError` when installing `inquirer` in a virtual environment. This is typically due to the virtual environment not being correctly activated or `pip install` being run outside the activated environment.
  Fix: Ensure your virtual environment is activated before running `pip install inquirer`. Verify that the Python interpreter being used is the one from the virtual environment.
• gotcha Avoid using Python's built-in keywords or common types as variable names for your question IDs (e.g., `list`, `dict`). This can shadow the built-in type and lead to unexpected behavior or difficult-to-debug errors.
  Fix: Use descriptive variable names for question IDs that do not conflict with Python's built-in keywords or types. For example, instead of `list = [...]`, use `my_list_of_questions = [...]`.
• gotcha While Windows support has seen improvements (e.g., Unicode handling in v3.4.0), it is still considered experimental. Users may encounter platform-specific issues compared to UNIX-based systems.
  Fix: Report any Windows-specific issues encountered on the GitHub repository. Consider testing your CLI application on a UNIX-like environment if consistent behavior is critical across platforms.

Install

• pip install inquirer

Imports

• inquirer

  import inquirer

  The main entry point for creating and prompting questions.
• inquirer.prompt

  import inquirer
  answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)

  The function used to display prompts and collect answers.
• Question Types

  import inquirer
  inquirer.Text(...)
  inquirer.List(...)
  inquirer.Confirm(...)
  inquirer.Checkbox(...)
  inquirer.Editor(...)
  inquirer.Path(...)
  inquirer.Password(...)

  This registry entry refers to the `inquirer` library (magmax/python-inquirer). While inspired by Inquirer.js, `PyInquirer` was a different, less maintained project, and `InquirerPy` is another re-implementation. Ensure you are importing from `inquirer`.

Quickstart

This quickstart demonstrates how to create a list of different question types (Text, List, Confirm) and use `inquirer.prompt` to display them to the user, collecting the answers in a dictionary.

import inquirer

questions = [
    inquirer.Text('name', message="What's your name?"),
    inquirer.List(
        'size',
        message="What size do you need?",
        choices=['Jumbo', 'Large', 'Standard', 'Medium', 'Small', 'Micro'],
    ),
    inquirer.Confirm('confirm', message="Proceed?")
]

answers = inquirer.prompt(questions)
print(f"Hello, {answers['name']}! You selected {answers['size']} and confirmed: {answers['confirm']}")