Python Progress Bar

Question

How do I use a progress bar when my script is doing some task that is likely to take time?

For example, a function which takes some time to complete and returns

Answer 1

for a similar application (keeping track of the progress in a loop) I simply used the python-progressbar:

Their example goes something like this,

from progressbar import *               # just a simple progress bar


widgets = ['Test: ', Percentage(), ' ', Bar(marker='0',left='[',right=']'),
           ' ', ETA(), ' ', FileTransferSpeed()] #see docs for other options

pbar = ProgressBar(widgets=widgets, maxval=500)
pbar.start()

for i in range(100,500+1,50):
    # here do something long at each iteration
    pbar.update(i) #this adds a little symbol at each iteration
pbar.finish()
print

Answer 2

I like Brian Khuu's answer for its simplicity and not needing external packages. I changed it a bit so I'm adding my version here:

import sys
import time


def updt(total, progress):
    """
    Displays or updates a console progress bar.

    Original source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/15860757/1391441
    """
    barLength, status = 20, ""
    progress = float(progress) / float(total)
    if progress >= 1.:
        progress, status = 1, "\r\n"
    block = int(round(barLength * progress))
    text = "\r[{}] {:.0f}% {}".format(
        "#" * block + "-" * (barLength - block), round(progress * 100, 0),
        status)
    sys.stdout.write(text)
    sys.stdout.flush()


runs = 300
for run_num in range(runs):
    time.sleep(.1)
    updt(runs, run_num + 1)

It takes the total number of runs (total) and the number of runs processed so far (progress) assuming total >= progress. The result looks like this:

[#####---------------] 27%

Answer 3

I like this page.

Starts with simple example and moves onto a multi-threaded version. Works out of the box. No 3rd party packages required.

The code will look something like this:

import time
import sys

def do_task():
    time.sleep(1)

def example_1(n):
    for i in range(n):
        do_task()
        print '\b.',
        sys.stdout.flush()
    print ' Done!'

print 'Starting ',
example_1(10)

Or here is example to use threads in order to run the spinning loading bar while the program is running:

import sys
import time
import threading

class progress_bar_loading(threading.Thread):

    def run(self):
            global stop
            global kill
            print 'Loading....  ',
            sys.stdout.flush()
            i = 0
            while stop != True:
                    if (i%4) == 0: 
                        sys.stdout.write('\b/')
                    elif (i%4) == 1: 
                        sys.stdout.write('\b-')
                    elif (i%4) == 2: 
                        sys.stdout.write('\b\\')
                    elif (i%4) == 3: 
                        sys.stdout.write('\b|')

                    sys.stdout.flush()
                    time.sleep(0.2)
                    i+=1

            if kill == True: 
                print '\b\b\b\b ABORT!',
            else: 
                print '\b\b done!',


kill = False      
stop = False
p = progress_bar_loading()
p.start()

try:
    #anything you want to run. 
    time.sleep(1)
    stop = True
except KeyboardInterrupt or EOFError:
         kill = True
         stop = True

Answer 4

This is my simple solution:

import time

def progress(_cur, _max):
    p = round(100*_cur/_max)
    b = f"Progress: {p}% - ["+"."*int(p/5)+" "*(20-int(p/5))+"]"
    print(b, end="\r")

# USAGE:
for i in range(0,101):
    time.sleep(0.1) 
    progress(i,100)

print("..."*5, end="\r")
print("Done")

Answer 5

You should link the progress bar to the task at hand (so that it measures the progress :D). For example, if you are FTPing a file, you can tell ftplib to grab a certain size buffer, let's say 128K, and then you add to your progress bar whatever percentage of the filesize 128k represents. If you are using the CLI, and your progress meter is 20 characters long, you would add one character when 1/20th of the file had transferred.

Answer 6

If your work can't be broken down into measurable chunks, you could call your function in a new thread and time how long it takes:

import thread
import time
import sys

def work():
    time.sleep( 5 )

def locked_call( func, lock ):
    lock.acquire()
    func()
    lock.release()

lock = thread.allocate_lock()
thread.start_new_thread( locked_call, ( work, lock, ) )

# This part is icky...
while( not lock.locked() ):
    time.sleep( 0.1 )

while( lock.locked() ):
    sys.stdout.write( "*" )
    sys.stdout.flush()
    time.sleep( 1 )
print "\nWork Done"

You can obviously increase the timing precision as required.