Zulip Terminal

An interactive terminal interface for Zulip.

Setup:

1. Download and install the prerequisite tools (pipsi)

$ curl -SsLo /tmp/get-pipsi.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitsuhiko/pipsi/master/get-pipsi.py
$ python3 /tmp/get-pipsi.py
$ printf '\nexport PATH="%s:$PATH"\n' '${HOME}/.local/bin' | tee -a ~/.bashrc

2. Install the package:

$ pipsi install --python python3 'git+https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal.git@master#egg=zulipterminal'

3. Download the zuliprc configuration file to your computer:

• Log in to the Zulip server(e.g. chat.zulip.org or yourSubdomain.zulipchat.com, or your own development server).
• Go to Settings -> Your account
• Click on Show/Change your API key under the API key section.
• Download the zuliprc file by clicking Get API key.
• Copy the file to ~/zuliprc

4. Run Zulip Terminal client (zulip-term)

$ zulip-term

Alternatively, you can specify the location of zuliprc using the -c option

$ zulip-term -c /path/to/zuliprc

Example zuliprc file

[api]
email=example@example.com
key=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
site=https://realm.zulipchat.com

[zterm]
# Theme can also be set to 'blue' and 'light'
theme=default

Hot Keys

Command	Key Combination
Previous message	Up / k
Next message	Down / j
Go left	left / h
Go right	right / l
Go to the last message	G / end
Narrow to private messages	P
Scroll down	PgDn / J
Scroll up	PgUp / K
Reply to a message	r
Reply to an author	R
New stream message	c
Go Back	esc
Narrow to a stream	S
Narrow to a topic	s
Next Unread Topic	n
Next Unread PM	p
Send a message	Alt Enter
Search People	w>
Search Messages	/
Beginning of line	Ctrl + A
Backward one character	Ctrl + B / ←
Backward one word	Meta + B
Delete one character	Ctrl + D
Delete one word	Meta + D
End of line	Ctrl + E
Forward one character	Ctrl + F / →
Forward one word	Meta + F
Delete previous character	Ctrl + H
Transpose characters	Ctrl + T
Kill (cut) forwards to the end of the line	Ctrl + K
Kill (cut) backwards to the start of the line	Ctrl + U
Kill (cut) forwards to the end of the current word	Meta + D
Kill (cut) backwards to the start of the current word	Ctrl + W
Previous line	Ctrl + P / ↑
Next line	Ctrl + N / ↓
Clear screen	Ctrl + L

Note: You can use arrows, home, end, Page up and Page down keys to move around in Zulip-Terminal.

Development

For development, the setup process is a little different.

1. Install pipenv

$ curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o /tmp/get-pip.py
$ python3 /tmp/get-pip.py --user
$ printf '\nexport PATH="%s:$PATH"\n' '${HOME}/.local/bin' | tee -a ~/.bashrc
$ python3 -m pip install --user pipenv

2. Clone the zulip/zulip-terminal repository locally

$ git clone git@github.com:zulip/zulip-terminal.git

3. Install dev requirements

$ cd zulip-terminal
$ pipenv --three
$ pipenv install --dev
$ pipenv run python setup.py develop

4. Run the client

$ pipenv run zulip-term

Running tests

• To run all tests:

pipenv run pytest

• To generate coverage report for tests:

pipenv run pytest --cov-report html:cov_html --cov=./

• To run the linter:

pipenv run pytest --pep8

• To check the type annotations, run:

pipenv run ./tools/run-mypy

• To open in debug mode:

pipenv run zulip-term -d

• To profile runtime:

pipenv run zulip-term --profile

Contributor Guidelines

Zulip Terminal is being build by an awesome community of Zulip.

To be a part of it and to contribute to the code, feel free to work on any issue or propose your idea on #zulip-terminal.

Do checkout our commit message guidelines and git guide.

Need Help?

Come meet us at Zulip.