cquiry

A single header C library for interactive CLI prompts.

Preview

Quickstart

Just download cq.h and drop it in your project. Done.

Platforms

This library is fully cross-platform and can compile from C99 to C23.

Usage

In order to use the library, include this at the top of your C file:

#define CQ_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "cq.h"

Context

I chose to implement a context for this library because of a trade-off between readability and manually freeing everything.

You can see the usage of the context in the example code.

Example

Here's the code for a simple demo program from the preview:

#define CQ_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "cq.h"

int main()
{
    CQ_Context ctx = CQ_DEFAULT_CONTEXT;

    char *name = CQ_text(&ctx, "What is your name?", 16);

    char *password = CQ_password(&ctx, "Enter your password:", 16);

    const char *fruits[] = {"Apple", "Banana", "Orange"};
    char *select = CQ_select(&ctx, "Select a fruit:", fruits, CQ_ARRLEN(fruits));

    const char *features[] = {"Bla bla", "Demo", "123"};
    uint64_t selected_features = CQ_checkbox(&ctx, "Select features:", features, CQ_ARRLEN(features));

    bool confirm = CQ_confirm(&ctx, "Finish demo?");

    CQ_cleanup(&ctx);

    return 0;
}

If you want to use the default context config, you can use the CQ_DEFAULT_CONTEXT macro. In case you want to customize the colors/escape sequences, you can do so.

Additionally, for checking if a checkbox is checked, you can use the CQ_CHECKED macro like this:

if(CQ_CHECKED(selected_features, 0 /* "Bla bla" */))
{
   ...
}

Functions

Function name	Parameters	Return type
CQ_text	(CQ_Context *ctx, const char *prompt, size_t max_len)	char*
CQ_password	(CQ_Context *ctx, const char *prompt, size_t max_len)	char*
CQ_select	(CQ_Context *ctx, const char *prompt, const char **options, size_t num_options)	char*
CQ_checkbox	(CQ_Context *ctx, const char *prompt, const char **options, size_t num_options)	uint64_t
CQ_confirm	(CQ_Context *ctx, const char *prompt)	bool

License

This project uses the MIT License.

Documentation

You can see the full documentation here.

References

questionary (Python)

inquire (Rust)