Autocompleting console input

Question

Yesterday I stumbled upon a Stack Overflow question that asked if it was possible to implement Tab-triggered auto-completion in a console application.

I thought that was an interesting idea, so I went ahead and wrote a small program that does just that, given a hard-coded string[] - I might eventually refactor it into its own class and reuse it in my own projects if I ever actually need auto-completion in a console app, but before I do that I'd like some feedback on the way it's implemented, given static aside, the logic itself is pretty much the way I'll have it regardless of whether it's in a dedicated class as part of something much bigger, or right there in a console application that does nothing but verify that the code works.

Pressing Tab when there's no input will change the current line to say Bar; because there's a word in data that starts with Bar, pressing Tab again will autocomplete to Barbec; another Tab will make it Barbecue, and then any subsequent Tab will have no effect, because nothing in the data starts with Barbecue - but then you could Backspace until the input is Ba, type a t to make it Bat, and when you press Tab then it autocompletes to Batman.

In other words, it all works exactly as it should. But does it look right?

class Program
{
 static void Main(string[] args)
 {
 var data = new[]
 {
 "Bar",
 "Barbec",
 "Barbecue",
 "Batman",
 };
 var builder = new StringBuilder();
 var input = Console.ReadKey(intercept:true);
 while (input.Key != ConsoleKey.Enter)
 {
 if (input.Key == ConsoleKey.Tab)
 {
 HandleTabInput(builder, data);
 }
 else
 {
 HandleKeyInput(builder, data, input);
 }
 input = Console.ReadKey(intercept:true);
 }
 Console.Write(input.KeyChar);
 }
 /// <remarks>
 /// https://stackoverflow.com/a/8946847/1188513
 /// </remarks>>
 private static void ClearCurrentLine()
 {
 var currentLine = Console.CursorTop;
 Console.SetCursorPosition(0, Console.CursorTop);
 Console.Write(new string(' ', Console.WindowWidth));
 Console.SetCursorPosition(0, currentLine);
 }
 private static void HandleTabInput(StringBuilder builder, IEnumerable<string> data)
 {
 var currentInput = builder.ToString();
 var match = data.FirstOrDefault(item => item != currentInput && item.StartsWith(currentInput, true, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
 if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(match))
 {
 return;
 }
 ClearCurrentLine();
 builder.Clear();
 Console.Write(match);
 builder.Append(match);
 }
 private static void HandleKeyInput(StringBuilder builder, IEnumerable<string> data, ConsoleKeyInfo input)
 {
 var currentInput = builder.ToString();
 if (input.Key == ConsoleKey.Backspace && currentInput.Length > 0)
 {
 builder.Remove(builder.Length - 1, 1);
 ClearCurrentLine();
 currentInput = currentInput.Remove(currentInput.Length - 1);
 Console.Write(currentInput);
 }
 else
 {
 var key = input.KeyChar;
 builder.Append(key);
 Console.Write(key);
 }
 }
}

• Tolani: very interesting question

Answer 1

Testing

• Personally I think it’s conceptually easier to test this code if you are returning a string – rather than a void: what if you decided to change the out put device from a console window to your printer – it would not be easy to change that. What if sometimes you wanted a console window and other times you wanted to send the same thing via text message? I guess it’s easier to separate what is being done vs how it is being done. E.g. Output key is the abstract concept but this could be done a number of different ways: (i) to the console, or (ii) through a voice synthesiser etc. I wrote some tests but then i threw it once it broke when i changed the API.

Naming

• What is data? It’s harder to think of a more abstract name. I’ve changed this to keywords.
• Personally I like to see the type along with the variable declaration.

Refactoring the code:

• I simplified and extracted some methods.

• The The HandleKeyInput and the HandleTabInput both seem to be doing conceptually similar things: a key is inputted and then a result is obtained. If it’s a tab then do X, but if it’s a key then do Y. There’s a common abstraction here that can be extracted.

• What I want to do is to make the two methods: HandleTabInput and HandleKeyInput to look and be absolutely identical.

• Data (renamed to keywords) can be a field so there’s no need to pass it in as a variable.

• I want to make two of your methods to basically be the same. They’re kinda doing this same things. After some refactoring this is what I got:

   public void HandleTabInput(StringBuilder builder, ConsoleKeyInfo keyInput)
   {
   // Perform calculation
   string match = ExtractMatch(builder);
   // Alter the builder
   builder.Clear();
   builder.Append(match);
   // Print Results
   PrintMatch(match);
   }
  

And then this:

 private void HandleKeyInput(StringBuilder builder, ConsoleKeyInfo keyInput)
 {
 if (keyInput.Key == ConsoleKey.Backspace && builder.ToString().Length > 0)
 {
 // Perform Calculation (nothing here)
 // Alter the builder
 builder.Remove(builder.Length - 1, 1);
 // Print Results
 ClearCurrentLine(); 
 Console.Write(builder.ToString().Remove(builder.ToString().Length - 1));
 }
 else
 {
 // Perform calculation (nothing here)
 // Alter the Builder
 var key = keyInput.KeyChar;
 builder.Append(key);
 // Print Reuslts
 Console.Write(key);
 }
 }

We can abstract out the calculation, and then the printing. After some work this was the result. It’s starting to look pretty similar:

 private void HandleKeyInput(StringBuilder builder, ConsoleKeyInfo keyInput)
 {
 if (keyInput.Key == ConsoleKey.Backspace && builder.ToString().Length > 0)
 {
 Program.KeyInput backSpaceKey = new Program.KeyInput.BackspaceInput(builder, keywords);
 backSpaceKey.AlterBuilder();
 backSpaceKey.PrintResult(); 
 }
 else
 {
 KeyInput input = new KeyInput.StandardKeyInput(builder, keywords, keyInput.KeyChar);
 input.AlterBuilder();
 input.PrintResult();
 }
 }

You could probably tidy things up a little more.

The final Result:

 public void RunProgram()
 {
 StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
 ConsoleKeyInfo capturedCharacter = Console.ReadKey(intercept: true);
 while (EnterIsNotThe(capturedCharacter))
 {
 KeyInput key = KeyInput.GetKey(builder, keywords, capturedCharacter);
 builder = key.UpdateBuilder();
 key.Print();
 capturedCharacter = Console.ReadKey(intercept: true);
 }
 Console.Write(capturedCharacter.KeyChar);
 }

Concluding Thoughts

• It reads marginally better. Still If you want to reuse the code you’ll have to make changes, but at least it will be a little easier to do when the time comes.
• Encapsulation could be a little better – typically speaking you want the KeyInput class to be instantiated via the factory only.

A link to see the full code.

• Alexis Pautrot: I disagree on your concluding thoughts. If I understand them and the theory behind, in this practical case your code is harder to read read than his. The simpler the better.
• BenKoshy: @Alexis Pautrot - appreciate your comment. Chrs