A simple menu system using python for the Terminal (Framebufer)

menu_launcher.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# Topmenu and the submenus are based of the example found at this location http://blog.skeltonnetworks.com/2010/03/python-curses-custom-menu/
# The rest of the work was done by Matthew Bennett and he requests you keep these two mentions when you reuse the code :-)

# There are several spots that need to be updated based on how many menu entries you have.  Search for the word "update" to find those spots

import curses, os #curses is the interface for capturing key presses on the menu, os launches the files
screen = curses.initscr() #initializes a new window for capturing key presses
curses.noecho() # Disables automatic echoing of key presses (prevents program from input each key twice)
curses.cbreak() # Disables line buffering (runs each key as it is pressed rather than waiting for the return key to pressed)
curses.start_color() # Lets you use colors when highlighting selected menu option
screen.keypad(1) # Capture input from keypad

# Change this to use different colors when highlighting
curses.init_pair(1,curses.COLOR_BLACK, curses.COLOR_WHITE) # Sets up color pair #1, it does black text with white background 

getin = None #user input on top menu
sub1get = None #user input on sub menu 1
sub2get = None #user input on sub menu 2, I don't use a second submenu, but I've left this here as an example for anyone who wants to use it

# This function controls what is displayed on the top menu (the menu first loaded when script is run)
def topmenu():

#Not sure if the following two lines are needed since I declare it at beginning of program, but here for safety
  screen.keypad(1)
  curses.init_pair(1,curses.COLOR_BLACK, curses.COLOR_WHITE)

  pos=1 #pos is the position of the hightlighted menu option.  Every time topmenu is called, position retuns to 1, when topmenu ends the position is returned and tells the program what option has been selected
  x = None #control for while loop, let's you scroll through options until return key is pressed then returns pos to program
  h = curses.color_pair(1) #h is the coloring for a highlighted menu option
  n = curses.A_NORMAL #n is the coloring for a non highlighted menu option
  
  # Loop until return key is pressed
  while x !=ord('\n'):
    screen.clear() #clears previous screen on key press and updates display based on pos
    screen.border(0)
    screen.addstr(2,2, "Program Launcher", curses.A_STANDOUT) # Title for this menu
    screen.addstr(4,2, "Please selection an option...", curses.A_BOLD) #Subtitle for this menu

    # Detects what is higlighted, every entry will have two lines, a condition if the menu is highlighted and a condition for if the menu is not highlighted
	# to add additional menu options, just add a new if pos==(next available number) and a correspoonding else
	# I keep exit as the last option in this menu, if you do the same make sure to update its position here and the corresponding entry in the main program
    if pos==1:
      screen.addstr(5,4, "1 - Dosbox Games", h)
    else:
      screen.addstr(5,4, "1 - Dosbox Games", n)
    if pos==2:
      screen.addstr(6,4, "2 - The Ur-Quan Masters", h)
    else:
      screen.addstr(6,4, "2 - The Ur-Quan Masters", n)
    if pos==3:
      screen.addstr(7,4, "3 - Windows 3.1", h)
    else:
      screen.addstr(7,4, "3 - Windows 3.1", n)
    if pos==4:
      screen.addstr(8,4, "4 - Exit", h)
    else:
      screen.addstr(8,4, "4 - Exit", n)
    screen.refresh()
    x = screen.getch() # Gets user input

    # What is user input? This needs to be updated on changed equal to teh total number of entries in the menu
	# Users can hit a number or use the arrow keys make sure to update this when you add more entries
    if x == ord('1'):
      pos = 1
    elif x == ord('2'):
      pos = 2
    elif x == ord('3'):
      pos = 3
    elif x == ord('4'):
      pos = 4
    elif x == 258:
    
    # This needs to be updated on changes to equal the total number of entries in the menu
      if pos < 4:

    # This doesn't need to be changed no matter how many entries you have
	pos += 1
      else: pos = 1
    elif x == 259:
      if pos > 1:
	  pos += -1
  # This needs to be updated on changes to equal the total number of entries in the menu
      else: pos = 4
    elif x != ord('\n'):
      curses.flash()

  return ord(str(pos))

# This functions controls what is displayed on the first submenu
# See topmenu for description of code
def submenu1():
  screen.keypad(1)
  curses.init_pair(1,curses.COLOR_BLACK, curses.COLOR_WHITE)
  pos=1
  x = None
  h = curses.color_pair(1)
  n = curses.A_NORMAL
  while x !=ord('\n'):
    screen.clear()
    screen.border(0)
    screen.addstr(2,2, "Dosbox Games", curses.A_STANDOUT)
    screen.addstr(4,2, "Please selection an option...", curses.A_BOLD)

    #Detect what is higlighted
    if pos==1:
      screen.addstr(5,4, "1 - Midnight Resuce", h)
    else:
      screen.addstr(5,4, "1 - Midnight Rescue", n)
    if pos==2:
      screen.addstr(6,4, "2 - Treasure Mountain", h)
    else:
      screen.addstr(6,4, "2 - Treasure Mountain", n)
    if pos==3:
      screen.addstr(7,4, "3 - Return to Top Menu", h)
    else:
      screen.addstr(7,4, "3 - Return to Top Menu", n)
    screen.refresh()
    x = screen.getch()

    # What is user input?
    if x == ord('1'):
      pos = 1
    elif x == ord('2'):
      pos = 2
    elif x == ord('3'):
      pos = 3
    elif x == 258:
    
    # This needs to be updated on changes to equal the total number of entries in the menu
      if pos < 3:

    # This doesn't need to be changed no matter how many entries you have
	pos += 1
      else: pos = 1
    elif x == 259:
      if pos > 1:
	  pos += -1
  # This needs to be updated on changes to equal the total number of entries in the menu
      else: pos = 3
    elif x != ord('\n'):
      curses.flash()
  return ord(str(pos))

  
# Main program  
# This needs to be updated on changes equal to the number you use for exit
while getin != ord('4'): #Loop until the user chooses to exit the program
  getin = topmenu() # Get the menu item selected on the top menu
  
  if getin == ord('1'): # Top menu option 1
    #Beginning of submenu 1 control logic
	# This needs to be updated on changes equal to the number of menu items in submenu 1
    while sub1get !=ord('3'): # Loop submenu until user selects to return to top menu
      sub1get = submenu1() # Get the menu item selected on submenu 1
      if sub1get == ord('1'): #Submenu 1 option 1
	os.system('dosbox2 /path/to/EXE -conf /path/to/dosbox.conf -exit') #Launches a dosbox program, exits back to menu after program ends
      elif sub1get == ord('2'): # Submenu 2 option 2
	()
      elif sub1get == ord('3'): # Submenu 2 option 3 (Exits to top menu at this point)
	os.system('')
	#End of submenu1 control logic
	
  elif getin == ord('2'): # Topmenu option 2
    os.system('uqm')
  elif getin == ord('3'): # Topmenu option 3
    os.system('dosbox3 /path/to/my/win31/install/WINDOWS/WIN.COM -conf /path/to/my/special/dosbox2.conf -exit') #runs my win 3.1 dosbox, exits back to menu after program ends
  elif getin == ord('4'): # Topmenu option 4
    curses.endwin() #VITAL!  This closes out the menu system and returns you to the bash prompt.

Perfect - Needed a menu for my Mame Arcade. Thanks

Omg. I don't know what it is, but I accidentaly open this gist and following code solved problem I struggling for a whole week.

curses.curs_set(1)
curses.curs_set(0)

Just a little suggestion for a patch:

You've got a very rare condition whereby the menu system will fail to draw if screen.getch() returns an un-ordinable string of length >1. This fixes it. I think it's got something to do with internationalization as the thing seems to break when my keyboard flips itself to French modeÉ

    # What is user input?
    if x >= unichr(1) and x <= unichr(int(optioncount+1)):
      pos = x - unichr(0) - 1 # convert keypress back to a number, then subtract 1 to get index
    elif x == 258: # down arrow
      if pos < optioncount:
        pos += 1
      else: pos = 0
    elif x == 259: # up arrow
      if pos > 0:
        pos += -1
      else: pos = optioncount

In order to avoid strange behavior of the terminal when something raises an exception inside the code I suggest changing the main menu to:

# Main program
try:
    processmenu(menu_data)
except Exception as exception:
    curses.endwin() #VITAL! This closes out the menu system and returns you to the bash prompt.
    os.system('clear')
    traceback.print_exc()
    sys.exit(1)

curses.endwin() #VITAL! This closes out the menu system and returns you to the bash prompt.
os.system('clear')

After, of course:

import traceback, sys

This prevents the terminal to become unresponsive if something happens and the user still have his trace back.

If anyone wants something similar to this that abstracts everything to its own class, I took some time to refactor this a bit.

https://gist.github.com/etkirsch/53505478f53aeeac24a5

Hello,

I'm trying to create sub-menu with 12 entries. First, the result was a strange behavior so I added the code from pablogsal to raise an exception.

Now, I get this error message when I try to get into this sub-menu:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./myscript.py", line 174, in <module>
processmenu(menu_data)
File "./myscript.py", line 150, in processmenu
getin = runmenu(menu, parent)
File "./myscript.py", line 131, in runmenu
if x >= ord('1') and x <= ord(str(optioncount+1)):
TypeError: ord() expected a character, but string of length 2 found

I see what the problem is but I can't find any solution.

Anyone could help me with that?

Thanks in advance.

Hello idItknow, look at 3 posts before your post (ebelliveau commented on Dec 5, 2014). It has the solution to your problem.

I'm facing a different problem. My menu's can be larger then 1 screen so it crashes with this error:
_curses.error: addstr() returned ERR

It is because curses tries to draw beyond the boundries of the screen. I'm still searching for a proper solution that also scrolls to the content.

If anyone is interested, I used this in a couple of classes and decided I'd like to take it a bit further, so I made it into a library that abstracts it into a bunch of different classes. This makes it a bit more extendable and flexible, and also easier to use. Check it out on github. Or see the docs here. Or pip install curses-menu. And let me know if you have feedback!

When Launched from a Windows putty it don't draw the borders correctly, it replaces it with x, y
Why is this, and how can I get putty to display the boarders correctly ?

@AppelonD For your PuTTY connection settings, go to Window, then Translation. Change the 'Remote character set' to 'ISO-8859-1:1998 (Latin-1, West Europe)'

I have a similar but simpler cross-platform menu creator class! And it has a unique interactive design!
It lets you go though the alternatives with an arrow using the arrow keys to move up and down!
If you're interested you can check it out here:
https://github.com/SngLol/PythonMenuSetup

what version of python is #!/usr/bin/env python exaclty? im getting error

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/jay/Documents/Scripts/Menus/Python/new_menu.py", line 31, in
import commands
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'commands'

works fine on last mint but mint 21 nope!!!

dw i fixed it with this command

pip install virtualenv