survey

Introduction to the Survey Library

The Survey library is a powerful and versatile tool designed for creating interactive and accessible prompts within terminal environments that support ANSI escape sequences. It enables developers to engage users interactively, collecting user input in a structured and user-friendly manner. Although it's important to note that this project is no longer maintained, it has left an indelible mark on the development community, aiding in the creation of seamless interactive command-line interfaces.

Overview

Survey provides a structured approach to querying users directly from the terminal. It supports a variety of prompt types such as input, password, confirm, select, and more, each designed to handle specific types of user input. Through these prompts, developers can easily capture necessary information from users in a way that is both intuitive and efficient.

Using Survey

To get started with Survey, one must import the library and define the questions that need to be asked. Each question can be customized with validations and transformations to ensure that the input collected is as expected.

Example Code

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "github.com/AlecAivazis/survey/v2"
)

// Define the questions
var questions = []*survey.Question{
    {
        Name:     "name",
        Prompt:   &survey.Input{Message: "What is your name?"},
        Validate: survey.Required,
        Transform: survey.Title,
    },
    {
        Name: "color",
        Prompt: &survey.Select{
            Message: "Choose a color:",
            Options: []string{"red", "blue", "green"},
            Default: "red",
        },
    },
    {
        Name: "age",
        Prompt:   &survey.Input{Message: "How old are you?"},
    },
}

func main() {
    answers := struct {
        Name          string
        FavoriteColor string `survey:"color"`
        Age           int
    }{}

    err := survey.Ask(questions, &answers)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println(err.Error())
        return
    }

    fmt.Printf("%s chose %s.", answers.Name, answers.FavoriteColor)
}

Key Features

• Prompt Types: Survey offers several prompt types such as input, select, multi-select, password, confirm, and more, catering to various needs for collecting user input.
• Customization and Configuration: Prompts can be customized for detailed configurations using flags and options that define how input is processed and displayed.
• Validation and Transformation: Built-in validators help ensure that user responses meet specific criteria, and transformations allow for dynamic input processing.
• Interactive Experience: Utilizes ANSI escape sequences to provide a smooth and intuitive user experience within the terminal.
• Extensible: Survey's design allows developers to create custom extensions according to their specific needs, enhancing the library's functionality beyond its core features.

Advanced Usage

Survey allows for more advanced usage with options to filter user input, launch external editors, and manage multi-choice selections with pagination. It also supports persistent filtering for continuous user interactions.

Alternatives

Though Survey is no longer maintained, developers seeking similar functionality can consider alternatives such as the Bubble Tea framework by Charmbracelet, which continues the tradition of creating immersive terminal user interfaces.

Conclusion

The Survey library has stood out as a remarkable tool for developers aiming to conduct interactive surveys and collect user input efficiently via the terminal. With its expansive feature set and adaptability, it provided a solid foundation for many terminal-based applications before reaching its end of maintenance. For those interested in maintaining similar interactive capabilities, looking towards its alternatives is recommended.