C# Console Loading Dialog

How do I use this?

Just download the LoadingDialogs.cs file and include the LoadingDialog namespace (using LoadingDialog;) where you want to use it.

Documentation

LoadingDialog

LoadingDialog myLoadingBar = LoadingDialog(string message = "Loading...", int totalProgress = 10, int barWidth = 20);

Parameters:

• Message: The description of your loading bar (this will be displayed above the loading bar).
• TotalProgress: How many tasks or items are being completed (this will be used to calculate a percentage based on current progress).
• BarWidth: The width of the loading bar in characters.

Properties:

public string Message;
public int Progress = 0;
public int TotalProgress;
public int BarWidth;
public ConsoleColor CompleteColour = ConsoleColor.Green;
public ConsoleColor IncompleteColour = ConsoleColor.Gray;

• Message: The description of your loading bar.
• Progress: The current progress of the loading bar.
• TotalProgress: How many tasks or items are being completed.
• BarWidth: The width of the loading bar in characters.
• CompleteColor: The colour of the complete section of the loading bar.
• IncompleteColor: The colour of the incomplete section of the loading bar.

Methods:

public LoadingDialog SetProgress(int progress);
public LoadingDialog IncrementProgress();
public LoadingDialog Start();
public LoadingDialog Update();

All methods with return type LoadingDialog are chainable.

• SetProgress: Set's the progress out of the totalProgress of the loading bar.
• IncrementProgress: Increment the progress of the loading bar by one (useful for when an individual task completes).
• Start: Initialises and displays the loading bar.
• Update: Updates the loading bar based on changes (automatically called by SetProgress and IncrementProgress, you should call this if you are manually changing properties rather than calling these methods).

Demo

using System;
using System.Threading;
using LoadingDialogs;

class Program {
	public static void Main() {
		// create a loading dialog
		LoadingDialog loadingDlg = new LoadingDialog("Demo loading dialog:", 100, 20);
		// start it
		loadingDlg.Start();

		// every 200 milliseconds increment the progress
		for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
			loadingDlg.IncrementProgress();
			Thread.Sleep(200);
		}

		// add a new line
		Console.WriteLine("");

		// create a new loading dialog
		loadingDlg = new LoadingDialog("Another loading dialog!", 100, 30);
		// start it
		loadingDlg.Start();

		// every 100 milliseconds set the progress to the current progress
		for (int i = 1; i <= 100; i += 3) {
			loadingDlg.SetProgress(i);
			Thread.Sleep(100);
		}
		loadingDlg.SetProgress(100);

		// add a new line
		Console.WriteLine("");

		// pause exit (if exe is not run from command line)
		Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit...");
		Console.ReadKey(true);
	}
}

Advanced usage

Customising colours

You can customise the colours of the loading bar to match your application's theme:

loadingDlg.CompleteColour   = ConsoleColor.Blue;
loadingDlg.IncompleteColour = ConsoleColor.Red;

Update progress from multiple threads

If you are performing tasks in parallel, you can safely update the progress from multiple threads:

using System.Threading.Tasks;

LoadingDialog loadingDlg = new LoadingDialog("Parallel tasks loading:", 100, 20);
loadingDlg.Start();

// Example with parallel tasks
Parallel.For(0, 100, i => {
	// Simulate work
	Thread.Sleep(100);
	lock (loadingDlg) {
		loadingDlg.IncrementProgress();
	}
});

File download progress

You can use the loading dialog to show file download progress:

using System.Net.Http;

LoadingDialog downloadProgress = new LoadingDialog("Downloading file:", 100, 20);
downloadProgress.Start();

HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
HttpResponseMessage response = await client.GetAsync("http://example.com/file", HttpCompletionOption.ResponseHeadersRead);
var totalBytes = response.Content.Headers.ContentLength ?? 1L;

using (var stream = await response.Content.ReadAsStreamAsync())
using (var fileStream = new FileStream("file", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None, 8192, true)) {
	var buffer = new byte[8192];
	long totalRead = 0L;
	int bytesRead;
	while ((bytesRead = await stream.ReadAsync(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0) {
		await fileStream.WriteAsync(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
		totalRead += bytesRead;
		downloadProgress.SetProgress((int)(totalRead * 100 / totalBytes));
	}
}

Building the demo yourself

• The demo can be built with dotnet.
• Once installed, simply enter the /src directory and run the build or publish commands, specifying the demo.csproj file.
  • Example 1 (Windows with 64-bit architecture in Release mode): dotnet publish demo.csproj -r win-x64 -c Release --output ../build
  • Example 2 (Linux with 32-bit architecture in Debug mode): dotnet publish demo.csproj -r linux-x86 -c Debug --output ../build
  • See more on command line arguments here.
• Run the compiled executable.