Writing Console Apps with DotNet in 2022 - Part 1 - Crayon

This blog is part of a series of blog posts looking at .Net packages to help .Net Developers create console apps.

Preface

A few months ago, I saw Evan You demo Vite. One thing in the demo I noticed were the options displayed in Coloured Text in the Console Window.

Initially dismissing this as a feature unique to Mac Os. I wanted to know if this was possible in a .Net Console App.

Crayon

Crayon is a .NET Package written by Manuel Riezebosch.

Its available on Github - https://github.com/riezebosch/crayon

and on Nuget - https://www.nuget.org/packages/Crayon

Getting Started

With Crayon installed, You have methods to style the Text.

So you can put

using static Crayon.Output;

Console.WriteLine("");
Console.Write(Red("All I see is Red !!!!"));
Console.WriteLine("");

Which displays

Now this is possible with Colour Commands already built into the Framework, but Crayon allows you to pass RGB Values, extending the colour palette.

using static Crayon.Output;

Console.WriteLine("");
Console.Write(Bold(Red("Red")));
Console.Write(" and ");
Console.Write(Rgb(255, 255, 100).Text("Yellow"));
Console.Write(Bold(" and "));
Console.Write(Bold(Rgb(255,192,203 ).Text("Pink")));
Console.Write(" and ");
Console.WriteLine(Green().Text("Green"));

Console.Write(Rgb(191, 64, 191).Text("Purple"));
Console.Write(" and ");
Console.Write(Rgb(255, 191, 0).Text("Orange"));
Console.Write(Bold(" and "));
Console.WriteLine(Blue().Text("Blue"));
Console.Write("I can sing a ");
Console.Write(Red("R"));
Console.Write(Rgb(255, 191, 0).Text("a"));
Console.Write(Rgb(255, 255, 100).Text("i"));
Console.Write(Green("n"));
Console.Write(Blue("b"));
Console.Write(Rgb(75, 01, 130).Text("o"));
Console.WriteLine(Rgb(238, 130, 238).Text("w"));

Which displays

Comes in Colours Everywhere

There is even a built in Rainbow Class

var rainbow = new Rainbow(0.5);
string testStr = "  Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high\n\r  " +
                 "There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby\n\r\n\r";
foreach (char c in testStr)
{
    Console.Write(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(c.ToString()) 
            ? c.ToString() : rainbow.Next().Bold().Text(c.ToString()));
}

All of this runs perfectly on Windows Terminal

and also via WSL, here is an example of the above code on Ubuntu.

So If you want a more Colourful Console output, Then check out Crayon and if you like it Please consider giving the Repo a Github star.