The Problem
Building interactive terminal applications in Go requires hand‑rolled handling of raw input, screen drawing, and widget layout. Without a reusable library, developers must duplicate low‑level code, leading to fragile UIs and inconsistent user experiences.
What This Does
tview supplies a self‑contained widget toolkit for terminal UIs. Core widgets live in top‑level source files such as box.go, button.go, inputfield.go, table.go, and treeview.go. Layout helpers (flex.go, grid.go, pages.go) and the application runner (application.go) orchestrate event loops and screen updates. The demos/ directory (86 files) showcases each widget with a minimal main.go (e.g., demos/button/main.go) and accompanying screenshots, making the API discoverable without external documentation.
How To Use It
Setup – The project uses Go modules; install the library with the command shown in the README:
go get github.com/rivo/tview@master
Configuration – No external configuration files are required. All widget behavior is controlled through method chaining (e.g., NewBox().SetBorder(true).SetTitle("Hello")).
Running a demo – Choose a demo folder, cd into it, and run the provided main.go. Example for the “Hello, World!” box:
cd demos/box go run main.go
To embed tview in your own code, import the package and start an Application:
package main
import "github.com/rivo/tview"
func main() { box := tview.NewBox(). SetBorder(true). SetTitle("Hello, world!") if err := tview.NewApplication(). SetRoot(box, true). Run(); err != nil { panic(err) } }
The library does not ship a CLI binary; the entry points are the demo main.go files.
Real‑World Use
A monitoring tool can render dynamic tables and log streams using tview.Table and tview.TextView. Example snippet:
tbl := tview.NewTable(). SetBorders(true). SetFixed(1, 0)
tbl.SetCell(0, 0, tview.NewTableCell("Metric"). SetAlign(tview.AlignCenter).SetSelectable(false)) tbl.SetCell(0, 1, tview.NewTableCell("Value"). SetAlign(tview.AlignCenter).SetSelectable(false))
app := tview.NewApplication(). SetRoot(tbl, true)
if err := app.Run(); err != nil { log.Fatalf("UI error: %v", err) }
This pattern is used by projects such as K9s and glab (see README list).
Code Health & Issues
Med – No test files – The repository contains zero *_test.go files, leaving core logic unverified. Med – No CI/CD – .github/ holds only FUNDING.yml; there is no workflow definition to enforce builds or linting. Low – Limited documentation for public API – While demos are extensive, the top‑level doc.go provides only package‑level comments; method‑level docs are sparse. Low – Potential race conditions – Widgets share mutable state (e.g., SetSelectedFunc) without explicit synchronization; library assumes single‑goroutine UI loop, which is typical but should be documented. Low – License present – LICENSE.txt is included, satisfying legal requirements.
No obvious security secrets or hard‑coded credentials are present.
The Bottom Line
tview delivers a mature, feature‑rich terminal UI toolkit with a clear API and extensive example code, making it suitable for production Go CLIs that need interactive interfaces. The main drawbacks are the absence of automated tests and CI, which increase maintenance risk for teams that require strict quality gates. If your project can tolerate manual testing or you plan to add coverage, tview is a solid choice.