Progress bar in console application

Question

I'm writing a simple c# console app that uploads files to sftp server. However, the amount of files are large. I would like to display either percentage of files uploaded or just the number of files upload already from the total number of files to be upload.

First, I get all the files and the total number of files.

string[] filePath = Directory.GetFiles(path, "*");
totalCount = filePath.Length;

Then I loop through the file and upload them one by one in foreach loop.

foreach(string file in filePath)
{
    string FileName = Path.GetFileName(file);
    //copy the files
    oSftp.Put(LocalDirectory + "/" + FileName, _ftpDirectory + "/" + FileName);
    //Console.WriteLine("Uploading file..." + FileName);
    drawTextProgressBar(0, totalCount);
}

In the foreach loop I have a progress bar which I have issues with. It doesn't display properly.

private static void drawTextProgressBar(int progress, int total)
{
    //draw empty progress bar
    Console.CursorLeft = 0;
    Console.Write("["); //start
    Console.CursorLeft = 32;
    Console.Write("]"); //end
    Console.CursorLeft = 1;
    float onechunk = 30.0f / total;

    //draw filled part
    int position = 1;
    for (int i = 0; i < onechunk * progress; i++)
    {
        Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.Gray;
        Console.CursorLeft = position++;
        Console.Write(" ");
    }

    //draw unfilled part
    for (int i = position; i <= 31 ; i++)
    {
        Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.Green;
        Console.CursorLeft = position++;
        Console.Write(" ");
    }

    //draw totals
    Console.CursorLeft = 35;
    Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.Black;
    Console.Write(progress.ToString() + " of " + total.ToString() + "    "); //blanks at the end remove any excess
}

The output is just [ ] 0 out of 1943

What am I doing wrong here?

EDIT:

I'm trying to display the progress bar while I'm loading and exporting XML files. However, it's going through a loop. After it finishes the first round it goes to the second and so on.

string[] xmlFilePath = Directory.GetFiles(xmlFullpath, "*.xml");
Console.WriteLine("Loading XML files...");
foreach (string file in xmlFilePath)
{
     for (int i = 0; i < xmlFilePath.Length; i++)
     {
          //ExportXml(file, styleSheet);
          drawTextProgressBar(i, xmlCount);
          count++;
     }
 }

It never leaves the for loop...Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I was also looking for a console progress bar. I didn't find one that did what I needed, so I decided to roll my own. Click here for the source code (MIT License).

Features:

• Works with redirected output

  If you redirect the output of a console application (e.g., Program.exe > myfile.txt), most implementations will crash with an exception. That's because Console.CursorLeft and Console.SetCursorPosition() don't support redirected output.

• Implements IProgress<double>

  This allows you to use the progress bar with async operations that report a progress in the range of [0..1].

• Thread-safe

• Fast

  The Console class is notorious for its abysmal performance. Too many calls to it, and your application slows down. This class performs only 8 calls per second, no matter how often you report a progress update.

Use it like this:

Console.Write("Performing some task... ");
using (var progress = new ProgressBar()) {
    for (int i = 0; i <= 100; i++) {
        progress.Report((double) i / 100);
        Thread.Sleep(20);
    }
}
Console.WriteLine("Done.");

Answer 2

You might want to try https://www.nuget.org/packages/ShellProgressBar/

I just stumbled upon this progress bar implementation - its cross platform, really easy to use, quite configurable and does what it should right out of the box.

Just sharing because i liked it a lot.

Answer 3

I know this is an old thread, and apologies for the self promotion, however I've recently written an open source console library available on nuget Goblinfactory.Konsole with threadsafe multiple progress bar support, that might help anyone new to this page needing one that doesnt block the main thread.

It's somewhat different to the answers above as it allows you to kick off the downloads and tasks in parallel and continue with other tasks;

cheers, hope this is helpful

A

var t1 = Task.Run(()=> {
   var p = new ProgressBar("downloading music",10);
   ... do stuff
});

var t2 = Task.Run(()=> {
   var p = new ProgressBar("downloading video",10);
   ... do stuff
});

var t3 = Task.Run(()=> {
   var p = new ProgressBar("starting server",10);
   ... do stuff .. calling p.Refresh(n);
});

Task.WaitAll(new [] { t1,t2,t3 }, 20000);
Console.WriteLine("all done.");

gives you this type of output

The nuget package also includes utilities for writing to a windowed section of the console with full clipping and wrapping support, plus PrintAt and various other helpful classes.

I wrote the nuget package because I constantly ended up writing lots of common console routines whenever I wrote build and ops console scripts and utilities.

If I was downloading several files, I used to slowly Console.Write to the screen on each thread, and used to try various tricks to make reading the interleaved output on the screen easier to read, e.g. different colors or numbers. I eventually wrote the windowing library so that output from different threads could simply be printed to different windows, and it cut down a ton of boilerplate code in my utility scripts.

For example, this code,

        var con = new Window(200,50);
        con.WriteLine("starting client server demo");
        var client = new Window(1, 4, 20, 20, ConsoleColor.Gray, ConsoleColor.DarkBlue, con);
        var server = new Window(25, 4, 20, 20, con);
        client.WriteLine("CLIENT");
        client.WriteLine("------");
        server.WriteLine("SERVER");
        server.WriteLine("------");
        client.WriteLine("<-- PUT some long text to show wrapping");
        server.WriteLine(ConsoleColor.DarkYellow, "--> PUT some long text to show wrapping");
        server.WriteLine(ConsoleColor.Red, "<-- 404|Not Found|some long text to show wrapping|");
        client.WriteLine(ConsoleColor.Red, "--> 404|Not Found|some long text to show wrapping|");

        con.WriteLine("starting names demo");
        // let's open a window with a box around it by using Window.Open
        var names = Window.Open(50, 4, 40, 10, "names");
        TestData.MakeNames(40).OrderByDescending(n => n).ToList()
             .ForEach(n => names.WriteLine(n));

        con.WriteLine("starting numbers demo");
        var numbers = Window.Open(50, 15, 40, 10, "numbers", 
              LineThickNess.Double,ConsoleColor.White,ConsoleColor.Blue);
        Enumerable.Range(1,200).ToList()
             .ForEach(i => numbers.WriteLine(i.ToString())); // shows scrolling

produces this

You can also create progress bars inside a window just as easily as writing to the windows. (mix and match).

Answer 4

I am still a little new to C# but I believe the below might help.

string[] xmlFilePath = Directory.GetFiles(xmlFullpath, "*.xml");
Console.WriteLine("Loading XML files...");
int count = 0;
foreach (string file in xmlFilePath)
{
    //ExportXml(file, styleSheet);
    drawTextProgressBar(count, xmlCount);
    count++;
}

Answer 5

I've created this handy class that works with System.Reactive. I hope you find it lovely enough.

public class ConsoleDisplayUpdater : IDisposable
{
    private readonly IDisposable progressUpdater;

    public ConsoleDisplayUpdater(IObservable<double> progress)
    {
        progressUpdater = progress.Subscribe(DisplayProgress);
    }

    public int Width { get; set; } = 50;

    private void DisplayProgress(double progress)
    {
        if (double.IsNaN(progress))
        {
            return;
        }

        var progressBarLenght = progress * Width;
        System.Console.CursorLeft = 0;
        System.Console.Write("[");
        var bar = new string(Enumerable.Range(1, (int) progressBarLenght).Select(_ => '=').ToArray());

        System.Console.Write(bar);

        var label = $@"{progress:P0}";
        System.Console.CursorLeft = (Width -label.Length) / 2;
        System.Console.Write(label);
        System.Console.CursorLeft = Width;
        System.Console.Write("]");
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        progressUpdater?.Dispose();
    }
}

Answer 6

I have copy pasted your ProgressBar method. Because your error was in the loop as the accepted answer mentioned. But the ProgressBar method has some syntax errors too. Here is the working version. Slightly modified.

private static void ProgressBar(int progress, int tot)
{
    //draw empty progress bar
    Console.CursorLeft = 0;
    Console.Write("["); //start
    Console.CursorLeft = 32;
    Console.Write("]"); //end
    Console.CursorLeft = 1;
    float onechunk = 30.0f / tot;

    //draw filled part
    int position = 1;
    for (int i = 0; i < onechunk * progress; i++)
    {
        Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.Green;
        Console.CursorLeft = position++;
        Console.Write(" ");
    }

    //draw unfilled part
    for (int i = position; i <= 31; i++)
    {
        Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.Gray;
        Console.CursorLeft = position++;
        Console.Write(" ");
    }

    //draw totals
    Console.CursorLeft = 35;
    Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.Black;
    Console.Write(progress.ToString() + " of " + tot.ToString() + "    "); //blanks at the end remove any excess
}

Please note that @Daniel-wolf has a better approach: https://stackoverflow.com/a/31193455/169714