Placeholder

A widget that is meant to have no complex functionality. Use the placeholder widget when studying the layout of your app before having to develop your custom widgets.

The placeholder widget has variants that display different bits of useful information. Clicking a placeholder will cycle through its variants.

• Focusable
• Container

Example

The example below shows each placeholder variant.

Outputplaceholder.pyplaceholder.css

from textual.app import App, ComposeResult
from textual.containers import Container, Horizontal, Vertical
from textual.widgets import Placeholder


class PlaceholderApp(App):

    CSS_PATH = "placeholder.css"

    def compose(self) -> ComposeResult:
        yield Vertical(
            Container(
                Placeholder("This is a custom label for p1.", id="p1"),
                Placeholder("Placeholder p2 here!", id="p2"),
                Placeholder(id="p3"),
                Placeholder(id="p4"),
                Placeholder(id="p5"),
                Placeholder(),
                Horizontal(
                    Placeholder(variant="size", id="col1"),
                    Placeholder(variant="text", id="col2"),
                    Placeholder(variant="size", id="col3"),
                    id="c1",
                ),
                id="bot",
            ),
            Container(
                Placeholder(variant="text", id="left"),
                Placeholder(variant="size", id="topright"),
                Placeholder(variant="text", id="botright"),
                id="top",
            ),
            id="content",
        )


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = PlaceholderApp()
    app.run()

Placeholder {
    height: 100%;
}

#top {
    height: 50%;
    width: 100%;
    layout: grid;
    grid-size: 2 2;
}

#left {
    row-span: 2;
}

#bot {
    height: 50%;
    width: 100%;
    layout: grid;
    grid-size: 8 8;
}

#c1 {
    row-span: 4;
    column-span: 8;
    height: 100%;
}

#col1, #col2, #col3 {
    width: 1fr;
}

#p1 {
    row-span: 4;
    column-span: 4;
}

#p2 {
    row-span: 2;
    column-span: 4;
}

#p3 {
    row-span: 2;
    column-span: 2;
}

#p4 {
    row-span: 1;
    column-span: 2;
}

Reactive Attributes

Name	Type	Default	Description
variant	str	"default"	Styling variant. One of default, size, text.

Messages

This widget sends no messages.

See Also

• Placeholder code reference