Description:

sparklines 0.5.0

This Python package implements Edward Tufte’s concept of sparklines, but
limited to text only e.g. like this: ▃▁▄▁▅█▂▅ (this I likely not displayed
correctly in every browser). You can find more information about sparklines
on Wikipedia. This code was mainly developed for running simple
plausibility tests in sensor networks as shown in fig. 1 below:



Fig. 1: Example usecase for such “sparklines” on the command-line,
showing IoT sensor values (generating code not included here).


Due to limitations of available Unicode characters this works best when all
values are positive. And even then true sparklines that look more like lines
and less like bars are a real challenge, because they would need multiple
characters with a single horizontal line on different vertical positions. This
would work only with a dedicated font, which is way beyond the scope of this
tool and which would significantly complicate its usage. So we stick to these
characters: “▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█”, and use a blank for missing values.
This code was tested ok at some point for Python 2.6 and 2.7, but no longer
supports Python 2 after it reached end-of-life. Now Python 3.5 to 3.8 as well
as PyPy 3 are all tested via Travis-CI.

Sample output
This is a recorded sample session illustrating how to use sparklines (as
GitHub doesn’t render embedded Asciinema recordings you’ll see here an image
pointing to the respective
asciicast):

Here is some example output on the command-line (please note that in some
browsers the vertical alignment of these block characters might be displayed
slightly wrong, the same effect can be seen for other repos referenced below):
Examples for the code below:
$ sparklines 2 7 1 8 2 8 1 8
▂▇▁█▂█▁█
$ echo 2 7 1 8 2 8 1 8 | sparklines
▂▇▁█▂█▁█
$ sparklines < numbers.txt
▂▇▁█▂█▁█
$ sparklines 0 2. 1e0
▁█▅


Installation
You can install this package using pip install sparklines from the Python
Package Index.
You can also clone this repository and install it via python setup.py install
or pip install -e ..
After installing, you will have access system-wide (or in your virtualenv
if you have used that) to sparklines, programmatically as well as via a
command-line tool with the same name.


Test
To run the test suite, download and unpack this repository or clone it,
run pip inastall pytest, and run the command pytest tests in the
unpacked archive. from the downloaded repository’s root folder.


Usage
Please note that the samples below might look a little funky (misaligned or
even colored) in some browsers, but it should be totally fine when you print
this in your terminal, Python or IPython session or your Python IDE of choice.
Figure 2 below might show better what you should expect than the copied sample
code thereafter:



Fig. 2: Example invocation from a Python and an IPython session.



Command-Line
Here are two sample invocations from the command-line, copied into this README:
$ sparklines 1 2 3 4 5.0 null 3 2 1
▁▃▅▆█ ▅▃▁

$ sparklines -n 2 1 2 3 4 5.0 null 3 2 1
▁▅█ ▁
▁▅███ █▅▁


Programmatic
And here are sample invocations from interactive Python sessions, copied into
this README. The main function to use programmatically is
sparklines.sparklines():
In [1]: from sparklines import sparklines

In [2]: for line in sparklines([1, 2, 3, 4, 5.0, None, 3, 2, 1]):
...: print(line)
...:
▁▃▅▆█ ▅▃▁

In [3]: for line in sparklines([1, 2, 3, 4, 5.0, None, 3, 2, 1], num_lines=2):
print(line)
...:
▁▅█ ▁
▁▅███ █▅▁



References
This code was inspired by Zach Holman’s spark, converted to a Python module
by Kenneth Reitz as spark.py
and by RegKrieg to a Python package named pysparklines.
And Roger Allen provides an even shorter spark.py.
But since it is so short and easy to code in Python we can add a few nice
extra features I was missing, like:

increasing resolution with multiple output lines per sparkline
showing gaps in input numbers for missing data
issuing warnings for negative values (allowed, but misleading)
highlighting values exceeding some threshold with a different
color (if termcolor package is available)
wrapping long sparklines at some max. length
(todo) adding separator characters like : at regular intervals

License

For personal and professional use. You cannot resell or redistribute these repositories in their original state.

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