How to print colored text in Python?

Question

How can I output colored text to the terminal in Python?

Answer 1

On Windows you can use module 'win32console' (available in some Python distributions) or module 'ctypes' (Python 2.5 and up) to access the Win32 API.

To see complete code that supports both ways, see the color console reporting code from Testoob.

ctypes example:

import ctypes

# Constants from the Windows API
STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE = -11
FOREGROUND_RED    = 0x0004 # text color contains red.

def get_csbi_attributes(handle):
    # Based on IPython's winconsole.py, written by Alexander Belchenko
    import struct
    csbi = ctypes.create_string_buffer(22)
    res = ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo(handle, csbi)
    assert res

    (bufx, bufy, curx, cury, wattr,
    left, top, right, bottom, maxx, maxy) = struct.unpack("hhhhHhhhhhh", csbi.raw)
    return wattr


handle = ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE)
reset = get_csbi_attributes(handle)

ctypes.windll.kernel32.SetConsoleTextAttribute(handle, FOREGROUND_RED)
print "Cherry on top"
ctypes.windll.kernel32.SetConsoleTextAttribute(handle, reset)

Answer 2

https://raw.github.com/fabric/fabric/master/fabric/colors.py

"""
.. versionadded:: 0.9.2

Functions for wrapping strings in ANSI color codes.

Each function within this module returns the input string ``text``, wrapped
with ANSI color codes for the appropriate color.

For example, to print some text as green on supporting terminals::

    from fabric.colors import green

    print(green("This text is green!"))

Because these functions simply return modified strings, you can nest them::

    from fabric.colors import red, green

    print(red("This sentence is red, except for " + \
          green("these words, which are green") + "."))

If ``bold`` is set to ``True``, the ANSI flag for bolding will be flipped on
for that particular invocation, which usually shows up as a bold or brighter
version of the original color on most terminals.
"""


def _wrap_with(code):

    def inner(text, bold=False):
        c = code
        if bold:
            c = "1;%s" % c
        return "\033[%sm%s\033[0m" % (c, text)
    return inner

red = _wrap_with('31')
green = _wrap_with('32')
yellow = _wrap_with('33')
blue = _wrap_with('34')
magenta = _wrap_with('35')
cyan = _wrap_with('36')
white = _wrap_with('37')

Answer 3

Stupidly simple based on @joeld's answer

class PrintInColor:
    RED = '\033[91m'
    GREEN = '\033[92m'
    YELLOW = '\033[93m'
    LIGHT_PURPLE = '\033[94m'
    PURPLE = '\033[95m'
    END = '\033[0m'

    @classmethod
    def red(cls, s, **kwargs):
        print(cls.RED + s + cls.END, **kwargs)

    @classmethod
    def green(cls, s, **kwargs):
        print(cls.GREEN + s + cls.END, **kwargs)

    @classmethod
    def yellow(cls, s, **kwargs):
        print(cls.YELLOW + s + cls.END, **kwargs)

    @classmethod
    def lightPurple(cls, s, **kwargs):
        print(cls.LIGHT_PURPLE + s + cls.END, **kwargs)

    @classmethod
    def purple(cls, s, **kwargs):
        print(cls.PURPLE + s + cls.END, **kwargs)

Then just

PrintInColor.red('hello', end=' ')
PrintInColor.green('world')

Answer 4

I'm responding because I have found out a way to use ANSI codes on Windows 10, so that you can change the colour of text without any modules that aren't built in:

The line that makes this work is os.system(""), or any other system call, which allows you to print ANSI codes in the Terminal:

import os

os.system("")

# Group of Different functions for different styles
class style():
    BLACK = '\033[30m'
    RED = '\033[31m'
    GREEN = '\033[32m'
    YELLOW = '\033[33m'
    BLUE = '\033[34m'
    MAGENTA = '\033[35m'
    CYAN = '\033[36m'
    WHITE = '\033[37m'
    UNDERLINE = '\033[4m'
    RESET = '\033[0m'

print(style.YELLOW + "Hello, World!")

Note: Although this gives the same options as other Windows options, Windows does not full support ANSI codes, even with this trick. Not all the text decoration colours work and all the 'bright' colours (Codes 90-97 and 100-107) display the same as the regular colours (Codes 30-37 and 40-47)

Edit: Thanks to @j-l for finding an even shorter method.

tl;dr: Add os.system("") near the top of your file.

Python Version: 3.6.7

Answer 5

YAY! another version

while i find this answer useful, i modified it a bit. this Github Gist is the result

usage

print colors.draw("i'm yellow", bold=True, fg_yellow=True)

in addition you can wrap common usages:

print colors.error('sorry, ')

https://gist.github.com/Jossef/0ee20314577925b4027f

Answer 6

You could use CLINT:

from clint.textui import colored
print colored.red('some warning message')
print colored.green('nicely done!')

Get it from GitHub.