boxen
Advanced tools
Package description
The boxen npm package is used to create boxes in the terminal for displaying messages. It is useful for CLI applications where you want to highlight information or separate it visually from other output.
Creating a simple message box
This feature allows you to create a simple box around a message with padding inside the box. The padding option adds an empty space between the text and the box border.
const boxen = require('boxen');
console.log(boxen('Hello, world!', {padding: 1}));Customizing box style
Boxen allows you to customize the style of the box with various options such as border style and color. This can help make the box stand out or fit a certain theme.
const boxen = require('boxen');
console.log(boxen('Custom box style', {borderStyle: 'double', borderColor: 'blue', padding: 1}));Aligning text within the box
You can align the text inside the box to the left, right, or center. This feature is useful for formatting the message in a visually appealing way.
const boxen = require('boxen');
console.log(boxen('Centered text', {textAlignment: 'center', padding: 1}));Chalk-box is similar to boxen in that it allows you to create boxes in the terminal. However, it is more focused on integrating with the chalk library for coloring text and does not offer as many box customization options as boxen.
CLI-box is another package that lets you create boxes in the command line interface. It offers a different API and additional features like built-in text wrapping, but it might not be as straightforward to use as boxen for simple box creation.
Terminal-kit is a full-featured terminal handling library that includes the ability to create boxes. It is more complex and offers a wider range of terminal manipulation features compared to boxen, which is more specialized and easier to use for just creating boxes.
Readme
Create boxes in the terminal
npm install boxen
import boxen from 'boxen';
console.log(boxen('unicorn', {padding: 1}));
/*
┌─────────────┐
│ │
│ unicorn │
│ │
└─────────────┘
*/
console.log(boxen('unicorn', {padding: 1, margin: 1, borderStyle: 'double'}));
/*
╔═════════════╗
║ ║
║ unicorn ║
║ ║
╚═════════════╝
*/
console.log(boxen('unicorns love rainbows', {title: 'magical', titleAlignment: 'center'}));
/*
┌────── magical ───────┐
│unicorns love rainbows│
└──────────────────────┘
*/
Type: string
Text inside the box.
Type: object
Type: string
Values: 'black' 'red' 'green' 'yellow' 'blue' 'magenta' 'cyan' 'white' 'gray' or a hex value like '#ff0000'
Color of the box border.
Type: string | object
Default: 'single'
Values:
'single'┌───┐
│foo│
└───┘
'double'╔═══╗
║foo║
╚═══╝
'round' ('single' sides with round corners)╭───╮
│foo│
╰───╯
'bold'┏━━━┓
┃foo┃
┗━━━┛
'singleDouble' ('single' on top and bottom, 'double' on right and left)╓───╖
║foo║
╙───╜
'doubleSingle' ('double' on top and bottom, 'single' on right and left)╒═══╕
│foo│
╘═══╛
'classic'+---+
|foo|
+---+
'arrow'↘↓↓↓↙
→foo←
↗↑↑↑↖
'none'foo
Style of the box border.
Can be any of the above predefined styles or an object with the following keys:
{
topLeft: '+',
topRight: '+',
bottomLeft: '+',
bottomRight: '+',
top: '-',
bottom: '-',
left: '|',
right: '|'
}
Type: boolean
Default: false
Reduce opacity of the border.
Type: string
Display a title at the top of the box. If needed, the box will horizontally expand to fit the title.
Example:
console.log(boxen('foo bar', {title: 'example'}));
/*
┌ example ┐
│foo bar │
└─────────┘
*/
Type: string
Default: 'left'
Align the title in the top bar.
Values:
'left'/*
┌ example ──────┐
│foo bar foo bar│
└───────────────┘
*/
'center'/*
┌─── example ───┐
│foo bar foo bar│
└───────────────┘
*/
'right'/*
┌────── example ┐
│foo bar foo bar│
└───────────────┘
*/
Type: number
Set a fixed width for the box.
Note: This disables terminal overflow handling and may cause the box to look broken if the user's terminal is not wide enough.
import boxen from 'boxen';
console.log(boxen('foo bar', {width: 15}));
// ┌─────────────┐
// │foo bar │
// └─────────────┘
Type: number
Set a fixed height for the box.
Note: This option will crop overflowing content.
import boxen from 'boxen';
console.log(boxen('foo bar', {height: 5}));
// ┌───────┐
// │foo bar│
// │ │
// │ │
// └───────┘
Type: boolean | (width: number, height: number) => [width: number, height: number]
Whether or not to fit all available space within the terminal.
Pass a callback function to control box dimensions:
import boxen from 'boxen';
console.log(boxen('foo bar', {
fullscreen: (width, height) => [width, height - 1],
}));
Type: number | object
Default: 0
Space between the text and box border.
Accepts a number or an object with any of the top, right, bottom, left properties. When a number is specified, the left/right padding is 3 times the top/bottom to make it look nice.
Type: number | object
Default: 0
Space around the box.
Accepts a number or an object with any of the top, right, bottom, left properties. When a number is specified, the left/right margin is 3 times the top/bottom to make it look nice.
Type: string
Default: 'left'
Values: 'right' 'center' 'left'
Float the box on the available terminal screen space.
Type: string
Values: 'black' 'red' 'green' 'yellow' 'blue' 'magenta' 'cyan' 'white' 'gray' or a hex value like '#ff0000'
Color of the background.
Type: string
Default: 'left'
Values: 'left' 'center' 'right'
Align the text in the box based on the widest line.
FAQs
Create boxes in the terminal
The npm package boxen receives a total of 10,368,714 weekly downloads. As such, boxen popularity was classified as popular.
We found that boxen demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
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