rich

rich Best Practices

rich transforms plain terminal output into engaging, readable interfaces. These rules ensure your rich applications are performant, testable, and follow modern Python best practices.

1. Code Organization: Centralize Console Management

Instantiate Console once per application run. Avoid creating new Console objects in every function or module, as this leads to inconsistent styling, performance overhead, and potential issues with interactive elements. Pass the Console instance explicitly or use a global singleton pattern for CLI applications.

❌ BAD: Repeated Console instantiation

# module_a.py
from rich.console import Console
def do_something():
    console = Console() # New console every time
    console.print("Doing something...")

# module_b.py
from rich.console import Console
def do_another_thing():
    console = Console() # Another new console
    console.print("Doing another thing...")

✅ GOOD: Single Console instance

# main.py
from rich.console import Console
from .module_a import do_something
from .module_b import do_another_thing

console = Console() # Instantiate once at the top-level

def main():
    console.print("[bold green]Starting application...[/bold green]")
    do_something(console)
    do_another_thing(console)
    console.print("[bold green]Application finished.[/bold green]")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

# module_a.py
from rich.console import Console
def do_something(console: Console): # Pass console explicitly
    console.print("Doing something...")

# module_b.py
from rich.console import Console
def do_another_thing(console: Console): # Pass console explicitly
    console.print("Doing another thing...")

2. Output: Always Use console.print()

For any output intended to be styled or managed by rich, use console.print(). Mixing print() with console.print() can lead to unpredictable output order and styling issues, especially with interactive elements like progress bars or live displays.