egui-controls

egui-controls is a Rust library that provides a ControlPanel proc-macro to generate a simple control panel interface using the egui immediate mode graphical user interface library.

Motivation

You're implementing a Rust algorithm that has various tunable parameters, and would like to inspect the output by tweaking the parameters in real-time.

Usage

cargo add egui-controls

Example

The Control Panel interface generated for CirclePackingAlgorithmConfig.

Suppose your typical config data that contains the parameters for the algorithm looks like this:

#[derive(Debug, Clone)]
pub struct CirclePackingAlgorithmConfig {
    /// The radius of the circles to pack.
    pub radius: f64,
    /// If circles overlap, then how many should be allowed 
    /// to overlap at most.
    pub max_overlap_count: usize,
    /// Once we find the circles, label them with the
    /// given name.
    pub circle_label: String,
    /// Some global constant that should definitely only take on this value.
    pub non_changing_global_value: i8
}
 
/// Some initial values for the config that make sense.
impl Default for CirclePackingAlgorithmConfig {
    fn default() -> Self {
        Self {
            radius: 12.0,
            max_overlap_count: 10,
            circle_label: "Some text".to_string(),
            non_changing_global_value: 42
        }
    }
}

Now, just derive egui_controls::ControlPanel for your data, and sprinkle in some #[control] attributes on the fields you'd like to be interactive in the UI:

+ use egui_controls::ControlPanel;
 
- #[derive(Debug, Clone)]
+ #[derive(Debug, Clone, ControlPanel)]
pub struct CirclePackingAlgorithmConfig {
    /// The radius of the circles to pack.
+   #[control(slider(2. ..= 15.0))]
    pub radius: f64,
    /// If circles overlap, then how many should be allowed 
    /// to overlap at most.
+   #[control(slider(0 ..= 20))]
    pub max_overlap_count: usize,
    /// Once we find the circles, label them with the
    /// given name.
+   #[control(textbox)]
    pub circle_label: String,
    /// Some global constant that should definitely only take on this value.
    pub non_changing_global_value: i8
}

Now, use config.ui(ui) to embed that in any UI section you're building with eframe::egui.

use eframe::{egui, Frame};
 
#[derive(Debug, Clone, Default)]
pub struct MyApp {
    settings: CirclePackingAlgorithmConfig
}
 
impl eframe::App for MyApp {
    fn update(&mut self, ctx: &egui::Context, _frame: &mut Frame) {
        egui::CentralPanel::default().show(ctx, |ui: &mut egui::Ui| {
            // Embed the settings panel
            // directly into your ui.
            self.settings.ui(ui);
            // Add this the struct's debug repr if you want
            // to see the values getting updated as you tweak
            // the settings via the ui.
            ui.vertical(|ui| {
                ui.code(format!("{:#?}", &self.settings));
            });
        });
    }
}
 
// Write the usual eframe entrypoint.
pub fn main() {
    let options = ::eframe::NativeOptions {
        resizable: true,
        initial_window_size: Some(::eframe::egui::vec2(2000.0, 500.0)),
        ..Default::default()
    };
    let app = MyApp::default();
    ::eframe::run_native("readme", options, Box::new(|_| Box::new(app))).unwrap();
}

Output

This generates a simple control panel interface for the CirclePackingAlgorithmConfig and we can tune the values via the sliders.

Note: You can run the readme example to generate the same output.