Build a Contact Book App With Python, Textual, and SQLite

Building projects is a great way to learn programming and have fun at the same time. When you work on a project, you apply different coding skills simultaneously, which is good practice for what you’ll do in a real-life project. In this tutorial, you’ll create a contact book application with a text-based interface (TUI) based on Python and Textual. To store the contact data, your app will use an SQLite database.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

• Create the contact book app’s TUI using Textual
• Handle the database operations using SQLite
• Connect the app’s TUI with the database code and make it functional

At the end of this project, you’ll have a functional contact book application that will allow you to store and manage your contact information.

To get the complete source code for the application and the code for every step in this tutorial, click the link below:

Demo: A Contact Book Built With Python and Textual

Contact or address books are a widely used type of application. They can be found on phones and computers, allowing users to store and manage contact information for family, friends, coworkers, and so on.

In this tutorial, you’ll code a contact book TUI app with Python, Textual, and SQLite. Here’s a demo of how your contact book will look once you’ve followed all the steps:

Your contact book will provide a basic set of features for this type of application, and you’ll be able to display, add, and remove the information in your contacts list.

Project Overview

To build your contact book app, you’ll organize the code in a few modules under a package. In this tutorial, you’ll use the following directory structure:

rpcontacts_project/
│
├── rpcontacts/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __main__.py
│   ├── database.py
│   ├── rpcontacts.tcss
│   └── tui.py
│
├── README.md
└── requirements.txt

The root directory of your project is rpcontacts_project/. Inside, there’s an rpcontacts/ subdirectory that holds the application’s main package.

You’ll cover the content of each file in this tutorial. The name of each file will give you an idea of its role in the application.

For example, __main__.py will host the application, and database.py will provide database-related code. Similarly, rpcontacts.tcss is a CSS file that will allow you to tweak the visual style of your Textual app. Finally, tui.py will contain the code to generate the app’s TUI, including the main screen and a couple of auxiliary screens or dialogs.

Prerequisites

To get the most out of this project, you should have some previous knowledge of how to lay out a Python project and work with SQLite databases. You should also know the basics of working with Python classes. Some knowledge about writing CSS code would also be a plus.

To satisfy these knowledge requirements, you can take a look at the following resources:

• Python Application Layouts: A Reference
• Introduction to Python SQL Libraries
• Data Management With Python, SQLite, and SQLAlchemy
• HTML and CSS for Python Developers

Don’t worry if you don’t have all of the prerequisite knowledge before starting this tutorial—that’s completely okay! You’ll learn through the process of getting your hands dirty as you build the project. If you get stuck, then take some time to review the resources linked above. Then, get back to the code.

The contact book application you’ll build in this tutorial has a single external dependency, which is Textual. This library provides a rapid application development framework that allows you to create apps you can run in your terminal and browser.

To follow best practices in your development process, you can start by creating a virtual environment and then install Textual using pip:

• Windows
• Linux + macOS