NativeDialogs

Zero-dependency, 100% cross-platform API for opening native dialog windows from Python.

Supported Platforms:

• Windows
• OSX
• Linux

Usage

from NativeDialogs import dialogs


dialogs.alert(
    text="Brittle bones, packed in decaying flesh.",
    title="I see you.",
    buttons=('Bring It On', 'Oh Hell No'),
)

How does it work?

• Windows >= Vista: ctypes + Windows API to open a TaskDialog.
• Windows <= XP: ctypes + Windows API to open a MessageBoxA.
• OSX: Applescript to open an Alert.
• Linux: ctypes + Xlib to open a window (Styled to look like a dialog).

Running the tests

Testing is done using tox and pytest.

Due to the nature of this package, you can't run all the tests on one operating system. Use windows/osx/linux environments to filter the tests.

tox -e windows

FAQ

Is this a full featured GUI library?

Lord, I hope not. Sufficiently complex use cases should roll their own tools.

Only a subset of any particular platform's dialog abilities are exposed in the goal of providing a consistent API.

NativeDialogs is for situations where you:

1 - Reliably need an alert message on multiple platforms

2 - Have limited options for including dependencies

Why not use GUI libraries like tkinter, GTK, Qt, wxWidgets, etc?

Cross-platform, but not always present. Also, they won't run from inside game engines like Ren'Py.

What about EasyDialogs from the standard library?

Not cross-platform, removed in python 3, and won't run on macOS Catalina.

But Linux doesn't have a native dialog window?

Including an .so file to open a custom window is as close as you can get. No GTK or Zenity here.

Why not use pywin32, PyObjC, or python-xlib?

It wouldn't be zero-dependency then, would it? Silly billy.

Can you add an input, file chooser, etc?

If you build a Linux version from scratch using C and Xlib, then yeah, sure. Good luck, bucko.