Is it possible to render markdown in a prompt?

# clikt

[Paul Woitaschek]

Is it possible to render markdown in a prompt?

[Sebastian Schuberth]

As of clikt 4 it should be, as it uses Mordant underneath, we in turn can render Markdown: https://github.com/ajalt/mordant/#markdown

[Paul Woitaschek]

I can't find an easily accessible API to use this in prompts. Do you have an idea, how to?

[Sebastian Schuberth]

Maybe https://github.com/ajalt/clikt/blob/master/samples/helpformat/src/main/kotlin/com/github/ajalt/clikt/samples/helpformat/main.kt gives you a hint?

[AJ Alt]

Sure, you can just use a Mordant prompt directly:

class MarkdownPrompt(
    prompt: String, terminal: Terminal
): Prompt<String>(prompt, terminal) {
    override fun makePrompt(): Widget = Markdown(prompt)
    override fun convert(input: String) = ConversionResult.Valid(input)
}
MarkdownPrompt("*prompt*", terminal).ask()

[Paul Woitaschek]

Ah that's cool!

[Paul Woitaschek]

What about adding a useMarkdown param to the prompt function itself?

[AJ Alt]

Hm, I doubt most people will use markdown in a prompt, so I'm not sure it's worth adding another configuration flag. I'm curious what kind of markdown you're looking to use? I expect most prompts will be something simple like "enter a string:"

[Paul Woitaschek]

Both in echo and prompt. But in echo actually more

[AJ Alt]

Nice use of color and emojii, that looks great! echo just forwards to terminal.println, so you could e.g. make an extension like

fun CliktCommand.echoMarkdown(message: String) {
    currentContext.terminal.println(Markdown(message))
}

and use that

[Paul Woitaschek]

I'll try that, thanks! That color is actually fake. It's one of these terminal screenshot websites. Im on mobile and just pasted it from written notion docs ^^

[Paul Woitaschek]

Originally I had ✅ but that got clipped in monospace

[Paul Woitaschek]

Btw I really really love clikt, it makes so much sense