Questions

Interact with end users through questions

Sometimes, it is necessary to prompt the user for a confirmation, a value or an option. Since Moulti occupies the entirety of the terminal and its standard input, it is no longer possible to use shell features such as read. This is why Moulti provides questions. Questions are special widgets the sole purpose of which is to display interactive components such as buttons and/or input fields.

InputQuestions

Creating a question is not very different from creating a step:

moulti inputquestion add my_first_question \
    --title='My first question with Moulti' \
    --text='What is your name?' \
    --bottom-text='We want information... information... information!' \
    --placeholder='Please enter your name in this input field'

Getting the answer is straightforward:

$ moulti inputquestion get-answer my_first_question --wait
Alice
$

Once the answer is submitted, the question's interactive components are disabled. This prevents users from submitting multiple answers for a single question.

Refer to moulti inputquestion add --help to get more control on what users can type in the input field.

ButtonQuestions

Moulti also supports buttons through buttonquestion widgets.

moulti buttonquestion add my_second_question \
    --title='My second question with Moulti' \
    --text='What is your name?' \
    --bottom-text='What a mess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob' \
    --button alice success Alice \
    --button bob primary Bob \
    --button craig default Craig \
    --button mallory error Mallory \
    --button oscar warning Oscar

Each button is defined by exactly three items:

• value: the value returned by get-answer
• style: default, primary, error, warning, or success
• label: what the button should display

Limitation: buttons cannot be changed through moulti buttonquestion update.

Again, getting the answer is straightforward:

$ moulti buttonquestion get-answer my_second_question --wait
craig
$

Questions

question combines the abilities of buttonquestion and inputquestion:

moulti question add my_third_question \
    --title='My third question with Moulti' \
    --text='What is your name?' \
    --bottom-text='I live on the second floor' \
    --placeholder='Enter your name in this input field, or click a button' \
    --button 'My name is Alice' default Alice \
    --button 'My name is Bob' default Bob \
    --button 'My name is {input}' success 'Neither, use input'

{input} is an optional placeholder that gets replaced with the input field value.

That makes it possible to return a value that reflects both the input field value and the button that was clicked:

$ moulti question get-answer my_third_question --wait
My name is Luka
$

Feature recap

The table below offers a summary of "question" widgets and their features:

Widget \ Feature	Input field	Buttons
inputquestion	yes	no
buttonquestion	no	at least 1
question	Yes	at least 1

What next?

Steps and Questions are somewhat complex beasts. Head to Dividers for a much simpler widget.