Can I retain state of a st.chat_message? Avoiding rerun of the app on interaction with widget

[Manas_Swami]

Summary

I am rendering an SQL query and dataframe (in st.tabs) as a result to a question (st.chat_message()), and I want to make that query editable, so that user can edit query, and run it again on db to get new results, but as soon as I click on a button, the app reruns and my current chat goes to chat history.

Expected behavior:

Is there any way to stop rerun in a chat window?

Actual behavior:

If I hit the Edit SQL button, this happens:

It reruns, and re-renders my chat history.

Am I hoping for too much?

Thanks in advance!

[Goyo]

It is unclear to me what you are asking.

Rerunning when you click a button is unavoidable. Some widgets can be put in a form so that interacting with them won’t trigger a rerun, but then it won’t have any effect in the application either.

A rerun won’t magically add stuff to your chat history. You write code that adds things to the chat history if certain conditions are met. The same about rendering, your code decides what to render each time it runs.

You can stop a rerun by calling st.stop().

[Manas_Swami]

Hi Goyo,
Yes, I’m storing the chat history in a list, and then rendering that. That’s not the issue. The issue is, when I interact with any widgets in the st.chat_message, I’m not able to do that, as it reruns.
I’m having trouble explaining myself

[Goyo]

You are not able to do what?

[Manas_Swami]

Ok, let me rephrase this -
Imagine you ask the chatbot “show me total number of employees in the database.”
The bot returns an SQL -
SELECT count(*) from employee

Now, in my case, I want there to be a button on the same chat window that allows me to fire this query and get the result back and show it in a dataframe right there. How do I do that?
As soon as I click the button, it reruns.

I hope this was a better explanation of my problem!

[Manas_Swami]

Any suggestions, @Goyo
I tried Modal, but I guess that doesn’t work with chat window.

[Manas_Swami]

@andfanilo hi Fanilo, I could really use your creative mind here!
I even tried switch_page (streamlit extras), but that also doesn’t work, sadly. Is there any way to edit the SQL that I get as a reply from the chatbot, and run it to see new results?