ShellProgressBar

visualize (concurrent) progress in your console application

This is a great little library to visualize long running command line tasks.

.NET Core ready!

It also supports spawning child progress bars which allows you to visualize dependencies and concurrency rather nicely.

Tested on OSX

and Windows

(Powershell works too, see example further down)

Install

Get it on nuget: http://www.nuget.org/packages/ShellProgressBar/

Usage

Usage is really straightforward

const int totalTicks = 10;
var options = new ProgressBarOptions
{
    ProgressCharacter = '─',
    ProgressBarOnBottom = true
};
using (var pbar = new ProgressBar(totalTicks, "Initial message", options))
{
    pbar.Tick(); //will advance pbar to 1 out of 10.
    //we can also advance and update the progressbar text
    pbar.Tick("Step 2 of 10"); 
}

Options

Progress bar position

const int totalTicks = 10;
var options = new ProgressBarOptions
{
	ProgressCharacter = '─',
	ProgressBarOnBottom = true
};
using (var pbar = new ProgressBar(totalTicks, "progress bar is on the bottom now", options))
{
	TickToCompletion(pbar, totalTicks, sleep: 500);
}

By default the progress bar is at the top and the message at the bottom. This can be flipped around if so desired.

Styling changes

const int totalTicks = 10;
var options = new ProgressBarOptions
{
	ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Yellow,
	ForegroundColorDone = ConsoleColor.DarkGreen,
	BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray,
	BackgroundCharacter = '\u2593'
};
using (var pbar = new ProgressBar(totalTicks, "showing off styling", options))
{
	TickToCompletion(pbar, totalTicks, sleep: 500);
}

Many aspects can be styled including foreground color, background (inactive portion) and changing the color on completion.

No real time update

By default a timer will draw the screen every 500ms. You can configure the progressbar to only be drawn when .Tick() is called.

const int totalTicks = 5;
var options = new ProgressBarOptions
{
	DisplayTimeInRealTime = false
};
using (var pbar = new ProgressBar(totalTicks, "only draw progress on tick", options))
{
	TickToCompletion(pbar, totalTicks, sleep:1750);
}

If you look at the time passed you will see it skips 02:00

Descendant progressbars

A progressbar can spawn child progress bars and each child can spawn its own progressbars. Each child can have its own styling options.

This is great to visualize concurrent running tasks.

const int totalTicks = 10;
var options = new ProgressBarOptions
{
	ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Yellow,
	BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkYellow,
	ProgressCharacter = '─'
};
var childOptions = new ProgressBarOptions
{
	ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Green,
	BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGreen,
	ProgressCharacter = '─'
};
using (var pbar = new ProgressBar(totalTicks, "main progressbar", options))
{
	TickToCompletion(pbar, totalTicks, sleep: 10, childAction: () =>
	{
		using (var child = pbar.Spawn(totalTicks, "child actions", childOptions))
		{
			TickToCompletion(child, totalTicks, sleep: 100);
		}
	});
}

By default children will collapse when done, making room for new/concurrent progressbars.

You can keep them around by specifying CollapseWhenFinished = false

var childOptions = new ProgressBarOptions
{
	ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Green,
	BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGreen,
	ProgressCharacter = '─',
	CollapseWhenFinished = false
};

Credits

The initial implementation was inspired by this article. http://www.bytechaser.com/en/articles/ckcwh8nsyt/display-progress-bar-in-console-application-in-c.aspx

And obviously anyone who sends a PR to this repository 👍