Easily Create Progress Bars in C++

Indicators is a project that has code ready for you to implement when creating progress bars in the terminal.

Characteristics

Thread-safe progress bars and spinners
Header-only library. Take a copy to include.
Single header version in single_include.
The source of the GIF
MIT License

Creating a Basic Progress Bar

To implement a progress bar in your app, add indicators/progress_bar.hpp and create a ProgressBar object. This is the general structure of a progress bar:

{prefix} {start} {fill} {lead} {remaining} {end} {percentage} [{elapsed}<{remaining}] {postfix}
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Bar Width ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The amount of progress in ProgressBar is kept as a size_t in the range [0, 100]. When the progress reaches 100, the progression is complete.

In application-level code, there are two ways to update this progress: Update progress using bar.tick()

Progress Bar

#include <indicators/progress_bar.hpp>
#include <thread>
#include <chrono>

int main() {
  using namespace indicators;
  ProgressBar bar{
    option::BarWidth{50},
    option::Start{"["},
    option::Fill{"="},
    option::Lead{">"},
    option::Remainder{" "},
    option::End{"]"},
    option::PostfixText{"Extracting Archive"},
    option::ForegroundColor{Color::green},
    option::FontStyles{std::vector<FontStyle>{FontStyle::bold}}
  };

  // Update bar state
  while (true) {
    bar.tick();
    if (bar.is_completed())
      break;
    std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(100));
  }

  return 0;
}

Another examples

Indeterminate progress bar

Progress Bar

Blocked progress bar

Progress Bar

Spinners

Implemented in real life

If you have an iso of say 5GB and you want to copy it to another directory, the code would be;

#include <indicators/indeterminate_progress_bar.hpp>
#include <indicators/cursor_control.hpp>
#include <atomic>
#include <filesystem>
#include <thread>
#include <chrono>
namespace fs = std::filesystem;

int main() {

  // Configure an indeterminate progress bar
  indicators::IndeterminateProgressBar bar{
      indicators::option::BarWidth{40},
      indicators::option::Start{"["},
      indicators::option::Fill{"·"},
      indicators::option::Lead{"<==>"},
      indicators::option::End{"]"},
      indicators::option::PostfixText{"Copying file..."},
      indicators::option::ForegroundColor{indicators::Color::yellow},
      indicators::option::FontStyles{
          std::vector<indicators::FontStyle>{indicators::FontStyle::bold}}
  };

  indicators::show_console_cursor(false);

  // Setup a file copy job to run in a separate thread
  auto copyfile_job = [&bar]() {
    const std::string src = "/home/user/5GB.iso";
    const std::string dst = "/home/user/Downloads/5GB.iso";

    try {
        auto done = fs::copy_file(src, dst, fs::copy_options::overwrite_existing);
        if (done) {
            std::cout << termcolor::bold << termcolor::green 
                << "Copy completed\n" << termcolor::reset;
        } 
        else {
            std::cout << termcolor::bold << termcolor::red 
                << "Copy failed\n" << termcolor::reset;
        }
    }
    catch (std::exception& e) {
        std::cout << e.what() << "\n";
    }

    // When the job is done, mark the progress bar as completed
    bar.mark_as_completed();
  };
  std::thread copyfile_job_completion_thread(copyfile_job);

  // Update bar state and wait for copy to complete
  while (!bar.is_completed()) {
    bar.tick();
    std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(100));
  }

  copyfile_job_completion_thread.join();
  
  indicators::show_console_cursor(true);  
  return 0;
}

Installing indicators and compiling your code

Just clone and use CMake and Make

git clone https://github.com/p-ranav/indicators
cd indicators
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DINDICATORS_SAMPLES=ON -DINDICATORS_DEMO=ON ..
make
cd
vim filecopy.cpp
g++ -pthread -std=c++17 filecopy.cpp