Creating an Innovative Productivity Application with Streamlit
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Chapter 1 Overview of the Productivity App
In a previous post, I explored the future of note-taking applications. In this piece, I'll outline the initial version of a productivity application I am developing using Streamlit. My goal is to evaluate whether Streamlit can effectively meet my needs. While I appreciate Streamlit's simplicity, I've also encountered some challenges.
The Application Experience
Upon entering the application, users are greeted with a single text area. This text area serves as the main interface, from which all other functionalities can be accessed through specific commands. To initiate various features, users type a '>' followed by a keyword. Currently, I have implemented four commands: Todo, Money, Weekend, and Clear.
Todo Command
The Todo command generates a straightforward to-do list. Simply typing "todo" displays the list, and appending text allows users to add new items. For persistent data storage, I've utilized SQLite.
Money Command
The Money command is primarily for entertainment. Inspired by a popular clip from Scarface that has recently made waves on Twitter, I included a "$" keyword that plays the clip. This could be amusing to trigger on payday, for example. However, I faced a challenge with Streamlit: it doesn't easily support autoplay for videos, which is a built-in HTML feature. To work around this, I had to convert the video to base64 format and embed it using raw HTML with st.markdown.
Weekend Command
Each Friday, I follow a Twitter account that features Daniel Craig announcing, "Ladies and gentlemen, the weekend." I thought it would be enjoyable to incorporate this into the app on a weekly basis. This feature was implemented similarly to the previous one.
Clear Command
The Clear command allows users to remove multiple widgets simultaneously. However, I encountered another limitation with Streamlit: when altering one widget, all components refresh, causing videos to restart. While this isn't a significant issue for simple functionalities, it could become frustrating with more complex widgets.
Future Developments
At this point, it's evident that this is a work-in-progress application. A few video clips and a to-do list won't significantly enhance productivity. My decision to halt further development with Streamlit stems from the realization that while it offers a lot of potential, implementing more sophisticated features requiring client-side JavaScript could lead to complications. Recognizing this early on is crucial.
In this video titled "Let's Build a Pomodoro Web App for Data Science | Streamlit #15," you can see a practical demonstration of using Streamlit for creating a productivity-focused web application.
Chapter 2 Exploring Advanced Features
As I consider future enhancements, I might look into alternatives that offer better support for complex interactions.
The second video, "How to Build a Python Custom Summarization App with Streamlit & LangChain," offers insights into building more advanced applications using Streamlit and LangChain, which might be beneficial for my development journey.