Welcome to month 8 of the 2025 Year of Code! This is the thread to share your Console projects. @Gabriel_Ludosanu has created a minimalist, and fun, Console Task App that allows users to add, remove and list tasks interactively in the terminal. No graphical interface, just pure console magic that demonstrates the power of Xojo for CLI apps! Learn more on the Xojo Blog and get the code here.
Remember: To be entered in the drawings for this month’s prize and the grand prize at the end, you need to share your code, preferably on GitHub. Refer to this blog post if you need help with getting your project on GitHub.
A small program that allows you to use ChatGPT on the console based on URLConnection.
I was inspired by ShellGPT and created this in Xojo for the command line. It is the first version and, of course, it does not come close to ShellGPT, but it shows what you can create with just a few lines of code. Note: You need an openAI API key to use it.
I also spent the weekend tinkering with a console app for this. I already use a console app to automate syncing the latest plugin versions directly from Einhugur and MBS. Unfortunately, that one’s not a great example to open source.
So I ended up building something new to solve an issue I had!
This is my Backup Prune Tool, a Xojo Console application to prune redundant TPLM backups. Backups can occur as frequently as every 24 hours. However, much of the database content is time-sensitive (new purchases, subscriptions, etc). Backups older than 4 weeks provide little value and can be safely pruned.
This console application automates a pruning routine where:
Backups older than 4 weeks are limited to one per month
Backups older than 12 months are limited to one per year
The console app confirms deletion behavior through user input. Optionally it can be used with a cron job to automate pruning by passing the “I accept” flag -y. There’s even a --dry-run flag to preview what will be pruned.
I know it’s a bit of a plug, but I wanted to share an example that shows how I use console apps in production. It earnestly came from a good place
This next bit though, that’s because I have to afford the price increase somehow…
I have written a console app based on the very first basic program I wrote that was used in managing critically ill patients in Intensive Care at Westmead Hospital in Sydney, Australia. I was forced to do this (using an Ohio Superboard with 4 K of RAM) because the hospital biomedical engineers refused to write any code that would be used in managing patients. It was used for many years until new monitors were bought, which incidentally agve the same results. It demonstrates data entry, complex calculations and display to screen, text file and SQLite database from a console app.
It also allws adjustment of the screen size and colours (in code)
I have written a basic chatbox, called ‘MyTherapist’ to illustrate how it could be used to help someone work through their emotional responses to a situation. It is very basic and needs refinement.
Perhaps you misunderstood what it is for. It has no use to anyone except me. It fetches the latest versions of plugins from Einhugur and MBS at hidden, private, just for me endpoints.
Once a day, my server fetches the latest info from Björn and Christian and caches everything for Plugins Pro users. This way I can centralize where Plugins Pro checks for the latest versions. (It would also prevent my users from abusing their servers, if that were ever a problem.)
