example: add c-vt-formatter example

Add an example showing how to use the ghostty-vt terminal and
formatter APIs from C. The example creates a terminal, writes
VT-encoded content with cursor movement and styling sequences,
then formats the screen contents as plain text using the formatter
API.
This commit is contained in:
Mitchell Hashimoto
2026-03-14 15:11:15 -07:00
parent 3c8feda118
commit 1e21ac1190
6 changed files with 157 additions and 1 deletions

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# Example: `ghostty-vt` Terminal Formatter
This contains a simple example of how to use the `ghostty-vt` terminal and
formatter APIs to create a terminal, write VT-encoded content into it, and
format the screen contents as plain text.
This uses a `build.zig` and `Zig` to build the C program so that we
can reuse a lot of our build logic and depend directly on our source
tree, but Ghostty emits a standard C library that can be used with any
C tooling.
## Usage
Run the program:
```shell-session
zig build run
```

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const std = @import("std");
pub fn build(b: *std.Build) void {
const target = b.standardTargetOptions(.{});
const optimize = b.standardOptimizeOption(.{});
const run_step = b.step("run", "Run the app");
const exe_mod = b.createModule(.{
.target = target,
.optimize = optimize,
});
exe_mod.addCSourceFiles(.{
.root = b.path("src"),
.files = &.{"main.c"},
});
// You'll want to use a lazy dependency here so that ghostty is only
// downloaded if you actually need it.
if (b.lazyDependency("ghostty", .{
// Setting simd to false will force a pure static build that
// doesn't even require libc, but it has a significant performance
// penalty. If your embedding app requires libc anyway, you should
// always keep simd enabled.
// .simd = false,
})) |dep| {
exe_mod.linkLibrary(dep.artifact("ghostty-vt"));
}
// Exe
const exe = b.addExecutable(.{
.name = "c_vt_formatter",
.root_module = exe_mod,
});
b.installArtifact(exe);
// Run
const run_cmd = b.addRunArtifact(exe);
run_cmd.step.dependOn(b.getInstallStep());
if (b.args) |args| run_cmd.addArgs(args);
run_step.dependOn(&run_cmd.step);
}

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.{
.name = .c_vt_formatter,
.version = "0.0.0",
.fingerprint = 0x9e3758265677a0c4,
.minimum_zig_version = "0.15.1",
.dependencies = .{
// Ghostty dependency. In reality, you'd probably use a URL-based
// dependency like the one showed (and commented out) below this one.
// We use a path dependency here for simplicity and to ensure our
// examples always test against the source they're bundled with.
.ghostty = .{ .path = "../../" },
// Example of what a URL-based dependency looks like:
// .ghostty = .{
// .url = "https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/archive/COMMIT.tar.gz",
// .hash = "N-V-__8AAMVLTABmYkLqhZPLXnMl-KyN38R8UVYqGrxqO36s",
// },
},
.paths = .{
"build.zig",
"build.zig.zon",
"src",
},
}

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#include <assert.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <ghostty/vt.h>
int main() {
// Create a terminal with a small grid
GhosttyTerminal terminal;
GhosttyTerminalOptions opts = {
.cols = 80,
.rows = 24,
.max_scrollback = 0,
};
GhosttyResult result = ghostty_terminal_new(NULL, &terminal, opts);
assert(result == GHOSTTY_SUCCESS);
// Write VT-encoded content into the terminal to exercise various
// cursor movement and styling sequences.
const char *commands[] = {
"Line 1: Hello World!\r\n", // Simple text on row 1
"Line 2: \033[1mBold\033[0m and " // Bold text on row 2
"\033[4mUnderline\033[0m\r\n",
"Line 3: placeholder\r\n", // Will be overwritten below
"\033[3;1H", // CUP: move cursor back to row 3, col 1
"\033[2K", // EL: erase the entire line
"Line 3: Overwritten!\r\n", // Rewrite row 3 with new content
"\033[5;10H", // CUP: jump to row 5, col 10
"Placed at (5,10)", // Write at that position
"\033[1;72H", // CUP: jump to row 1, col 72
"RIGHT->", // Near the right edge of row 1
};
for (size_t i = 0; i < sizeof(commands) / sizeof(commands[0]); i++) {
ghostty_terminal_vt_write(terminal, (const uint8_t *)commands[i],
strlen(commands[i]));
}
// Create a plain-text formatter for the terminal
GhosttyFormatterTerminalOptions fmt_opts = GHOSTTY_INIT_SIZED(GhosttyFormatterTerminalOptions);
fmt_opts.emit = GHOSTTY_FORMATTER_FORMAT_PLAIN;
fmt_opts.trim = true;
GhosttyFormatter formatter;
result = ghostty_formatter_terminal_new(NULL, &formatter, terminal, fmt_opts);
assert(result == GHOSTTY_SUCCESS);
// Format into an allocated buffer
uint8_t *buf = NULL;
size_t len = 0;
result = ghostty_formatter_format_alloc(formatter, NULL, &buf, &len);
assert(result == GHOSTTY_SUCCESS);
// Print the formatted output
printf("Formatted output (%zu bytes):\n", len);
fwrite(buf, 1, len, stdout);
printf("\n");
// Clean up
free(buf);
ghostty_formatter_free(formatter);
ghostty_terminal_free(terminal);
return 0;
}