boxen

boxen

Create boxes in the terminal

Install

npm install boxen

Usage

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│
└──────────────────────┘
*/

API

boxen(text, options?)

text

Type: string

Text inside the box.

options

Type: object

borderColor

Type: string
Values: 'black' 'red' 'green' 'yellow' 'blue' 'magenta' 'cyan' 'white' 'gray' or a hex value like '#ff0000'

Color of the box border.

borderStyle

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: '|'
}

dimBorder

Type: boolean
Default: false

Reduce opacity of the border.

title

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  │
└─────────┘
*/

titleAlignment

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│
└───────────────┘
*/

width

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      │
// └─────────────┘

height

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│
// │       │
// │       │
// └───────┘

fullscreen

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],
}));

padding

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.

margin

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.

float

Type: string
Default: 'left'
Values: 'right' 'center' 'left'

Float the box on the available terminal screen space.

backgroundColor

Type: string
Values: 'black' 'red' 'green' 'yellow' 'blue' 'magenta' 'cyan' 'white' 'gray' or a hex value like '#ff0000'

Color of the background.

textAlignment

Type: string
Default: 'left'
Values: 'left' 'center' 'right'

Align the text in the box based on the widest line.

Maintainer

• Sindre Sorhus
• Caesarovich

Related

• boxen-cli - CLI for this module
• cli-boxes - Boxes for use in the terminal

Similar packages

Other packages similar to boxen

cli-box

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

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.