pokedex-cli

A terminal-based Pokédex written in C. Fetches live data from PokéAPI and renders it with ANSI colors, a real rendered sprite (via chafa), and full bilingual output.

=== POKÉDEX ENTRY #94: gengar ===

           ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
        ▄██████████▄
       ██▀▀      ▀▀██        (sprite rendered here
      ██   ●    ●   ██        in full color by chafa)
      ██     ▄▄     ██
       ██▄  ▀▀▀▀  ▄██
        ▀██▄▄▄▄▄▄██▀
          ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

Height: 1.5 m    Weight: 40.5 kg

Types: [ghost] [poison]

Description: Under a full moon, this Pokémon likes to mimic the moves of the people it is hunting.

Base Stats:
  HP               [■■■■■■■             ]  60
  Attack           [■■■■■■■■■           ]  65
  Defense          [■■■■■■              ]  60
  Sp. Atk          [■■■■■■■■■           ]  65
  Sp. Def          [■■■■■■■■           ]   75
  Speed            [■■■■■■■■■■■         ] 110

  Total: 435 / 780

Features

• Fetches live Pokémon data by name from PokéAPI
• Displays ID, name, types, height, weight and Pokédex flavor text
• Renders base stats as colored ANSI bars, plus the Base Stat Total (BST)
• Shows the official artwork sprite directly in the terminal via chafa
• Bilingual output (English / Italian) — labels, stat names, type names and flavor text all switch language with a single flag
• Graceful error handling (unknown Pokémon, network errors, missing chafa)

Requirements

Dependency	Purpose
libcurl	HTTP requests to PokéAPI
cJSON	JSON parsing
chafa	Terminal sprite rendering (optional, but recommended)
GCC + make	Build

Install dependencies on Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S base-devel curl chafa

base-devel provides gcc and make. cJSON.h / cJSON.c are vendored directly in this repository, so no separate cJSON package is required.

Build & install

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/pokedex-cli.git
cd pokedex-cli

make               # compiles the 'pokedex' binary
sudo make install  # installs it to /usr/local/bin, so it's available system-wide

Once installed, run it from anywhere as pokedex <name>. To remove it later: sudo make uninstall.

Prefer a local build without installing? make alone produces a ./pokedex binary you can run directly, no sudo required.

Usage

pokedex <pokemon-name> [-it|-en]

The language flag is optional and order-independent — it can come before or after the name. Default language is English.

Command	Result
pokedex gengar	Gengar's entry in English (default)
pokedex gengar -it	Gengar's entry in Italian
pokedex -it charizard	Same as above — flag before the name works too
pokedex pikachu -en	Explicitly force English

Project structure

.
├── main.c       # application source
├── cJSON.c      # vendored JSON library (implementation)
├── cJSON.h      # vendored JSON library (header)
├── Makefile     # build / install / uninstall targets
└── README.md

Roadmap

• Evolution chain display
• Local caching to reduce redundant API calls (especially for translated type names)
• Config file for default language / sprite size / color theme
• Additional languages beyond English and Italian

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.

Credits

Data provided by PokéAPI. Sprite rendering by chafa. JSON parsing by cJSON.