Beyond print( ): Modern Python Text Display Techniques You Need to Know
Still using print() in your python scripts ?, the same old boring black & white text, no flair, no styles ?
After going through this article, you will print like a PRO!. Thats right, in this article we will see how to transform your boring terminal black & white output into a work of art using python library Rich.
Table of Contents
About Rich
It is a library for displaying rich text on the terminal and jupyter notebook. It also helps to render advanced contents such as tables, syntax highlighted code, progress bar, markdown files, json files etc.
Installation
Rich can be installed using pip from PyPI or your favorite package manager like rye, uv or poetry etc.
For using rich in Jupyter Notebook or Jupyter Lab, install with additional dependencies using rich[jupyter]
Rich print
Rich print method is identical signature to the built-in print function with features included to add colors, formats, links and emojis using markup tags.
Markup Tags
Tags can be used to define the text colors, background color, text formats, underline, strike-through, blink, links etc.Text Color
Color name or CSS color code can be used to represent the text color.
[red]Red text[/][green]Green text[/][#ffaa00]Orange text[/][#0000ff]Blue text[/]
Background Color
[red on yellow]Red text on Yellow background[/][blue on white]Blue text on white background[/]
from rich import print
print("----Color Names----")
print("[red] Red Text [/]")
print("[green] Green Text [/]")
print("[magenta] Magenta Text [/]")
print("[yellow on red]Yellow Text on Red Background [/]")
print("----Color Codes----")
print("[#ffaa00] Orange Text [/]")
print("[#32CD32] Lime Green Text [/]")
print("[rgb(0,0,255)] Blue Text [/]")
Text Format
[bold]Bold Text[/][italic]Italic Text[/][underline]Underlined Text[/][strike]Text with line through it[/][reverse]Background and foreground color reversed[/][blink]Blink text[/]
from rich import print
print("[italic]Italic text[/]")
print("[bold]Bold text[/]")
print("[bold italic]Bold Italic text[/]")
print("[strike]Strikethrough text[/]")
print("[u]Underline text[/]")
print("[uu]Double Underline text[/]")
print("[blink]Blink text[/]")
Link
- [link=https://tech.arunkumarn.in]Tech Resources[/link]
from rich import print
print("[link=https://tech.arunkumarn.in]Resource link[/link]")
print("[link=https://www.youtube.com/@aavishkarah]YouTube Channel[/link]")
Emoji
Emoji can be inserted in the text using emoji code name surrounded by colons : .
Examples:
| code | emoji |
|---|---|
:flag_for_india: |
🇮🇳 |
:100: |
💯 |
:+1: |
👍 |
:-1: |
👎 |
:shield: |
 |
:heart: |
 |
The list of emoji supported by rich library can be printed on the terminal by running following command.
from rich import print
print(":+1: :speech_balloon: :arrow_right: :ice_cream: :hundred_points:")
Rich Console
To have complete control over the terminal formatting, rich provides Console class. The console object auto detects the capabilities of the terminal like size, encoding, is_terminal and color_system, using these details it convert colors and styles accordingly.
print method
print method from Console class helps to render rich content to the terminal. It does heavy lifting works of pretty printing and styling python objects using __str__ method.
Console object print method can also render Rich's built-in-objects such as Table, Text, Syntax or other custom objects.
Adding Styles
Console print method accepts style keyword argument to specify foreground, background color and text emphasis like bold, italic etc.
from rich.console import Console
console = Console()
console.print("Welcome to Aavishkarah",
style="magenta")
console.print("White Background with Red Text",
style="red on white")
console.print("Blue bold text underlined with yellow background",
style="bold blue underline on yellow")
Justify or Alignment
Console print method supports justify argument. justify arguments accepts one of the four values default, left, center and right.
from rich.console import Console
console = Console()
console.print("Default justify")
console.print("Left justify", justify="left")
console.print("Center justify", justify="center")
console.print("Right justify", justify="right")
Overflow
When the space is restricted, and you need to print content larger than the available space, overflow happens.
overflow argument in print method helps to handel these type of scenarios. it accepts one of the three values fold (default value), crop and ellipsis.
| value | description |
|---|---|
| fold | excess characters on following lines. |
| crop | truncates text at the end of line. |
| ellipsis | inserts ... at the end of the text truncated |
from rich.console import Console
console = Console(width=26)
url="https://tech.arunkumarn.in/blogs/python/Convert_Jupyter_Notebooks_into_Interactive_Slides/"
console.print("fold", style="magenta", justify="center")
console.print(url, overflow="fold")
print()
console.print("crop", style="magenta", justify="center")
console.print(url, overflow="crop")
print()
console.print("ellipsis", style="magenta", justify="center")
console.print(url, overflow="ellipsis")
rule method
rule() method draws a line with optional centered title. It can accept four optional arguments.
| arguments | description |
|---|---|
| title | Text to render over the rule. Defaults to "". |
| characters | Character(s) to form the line. Defaults to "─". |
| style | Style of line. Defaults to "rule.line". |
| align | How to align the title, one of "left", "center", or "right". Defaults to "center". |
from rich.console import Console
console = Console()
console.rule()
console.rule("Aavishkarah")
console.rule("Aavishkarah", style="red")
console.rule("Aavishkarah", align="right")
console.rule("Aavishkarah", characters="*")
console.rule("Aavishkarah", characters=">:<", align="left", style="magenta")
Printing Json
print_json method is used to pretty print the JSON.
{"YouTube": "https://www.youtube.com/@aavishkarah?sub_confirmation=1","Instagram": "https://instagram.com/aavishkarah","Facebook": "https://facebook.com/people/Aavishkarah/61573021117727","Whatsapp": "https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vb5ddY75a24ASH3a4535","Telegram": "https://t.me/SDpython","Github": "https://github.com/aavishkarah","Website": "https://tech.arunkumarn.in/"}
Status Indication
while you are download a file or function is taking longer time to execute, it will be hard to indicate the status in the terminal. Now with the help of status() method, that problem is solved.
status method can display status messages with a spinner animation that won't interfere with regular console output. Use context manager to display the status message.
from rich.console import Console
from time import sleep
console = Console()
def delay_task(n):
for i in range(n):
console.print(f"{i=}")
sleep(2)
with console.status("Working....", spinner="monkey"):
delay_task(5)
To list out all the spinners run the following command in terminal.
Rich in REPL
While working in REPL to style the output, simply execute a line of code inside the interpreter, so that python data structures are automatically highlighted and pretty printed.
