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

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