textual-serve

Every Textual application is now a web application.

With 3 lines of code, any Textual app can run in the browser.

This is Posting running in the terminal.
This is Posting running in the browser.

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Getting Started

First, install (or upgrade) Textual.

Then install textual-serve from PyPI:

pip install textual-serve

Creating a server

First import the Server class:

from textual_serve.server import Server

Then create a Server instance and pass the command that launches your Textual app:

server = Server("python -m textual")

The command can be anything you would enter in the shell, as long as it results in a Textual app running.

Finally, call the serve method:

server.serve()

You will now be able to click on the link in the terminal to run your app in a browser.

Summary

Run this code, visit http://localhost:8000

from textual_serve.server import Server

server = Server("python -m textual")
server.serve()

Configuration

The Server class has the following parameters:

parameter	description
command	A shell command to launch a Textual app.
host	The host of the web application (defaults to "localhost").
port	The port for the web application (defaults to 8000).
title	The title show in the web app on load, leave as None to use the command.
public_url	The public URL, if the server is behind a proxy. None for the local URL.
statics_path	Path to statics folder, relative to server.py. Default uses directory in module.
templates_path	Path to templates folder, relative to server.py. Default uses directory in module.

The Server.serve method accepts a debug parameter. When set to True, this will enable textual devtools.

How does it work?

When you visit the app URL, the server launches an instance of your app in a subprocess, and communicates with it via a websocket.

This means that you can serve multiple Textual apps across all the CPUs on your system.

Note that Textual-serve uses a custom protocol to communicate with Textual apps. It does not simply expose a shell in your browser. There is no way for a malicious user to do anything the app-author didn't intend.

See also

See also textual-web which serves Textual apps on a public URL.

You can consider this project to essentially be a self-hosted equivalent of Textual-web.