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

This answer doesn't rely on external packages, I also think that most people just want a ready-made piece of code. The code below can be adapted to fit your needs by customizing: bar progress symbol '#', bar size, text prefix etc.

import sys

def progressbar(it, prefix="", size=60, file=sys.stdout):
    count = len(it)
    def show(j):
        x = int(size*j/count)
        file.write("%s[%s%s] %i/%i\r" % (prefix, "#"*x, "."*(size-x), j, count))
        file.flush()        
    show(0)
    for i, item in enumerate(it):
        yield item
        show(i+1)
    file.write("\n")
    file.flush()

Usage:

import time

for i in progressbar(range(15), "Computing: ", 40):
    time.sleep(0.1) # any calculation you need

Output:

Computing: [################........................] 4/15

• Doesn't require a second thread. Some solutions/packages above require. A second thread can be a problem, for a jupyter notebook, for example.

• Works with any iterable it means anything that len() can be used on. A list, a dict of anything for example ['a', 'b', 'c' ... 'g']

• Works with generators only have to wrap it with a list(). For example for i in progressbar(list(your_generator), "Computing: ", 40):

You can also change output by changing file to sys.stderr for example