cog-cli

The cog-cli is a CLI program that allows you to start up several "cogs" and monitor their status without having to create a bunch of terminal windows for each process. It also, if you specify a watcher in your cog.json will communicate with the Cog Server (cog-server) which allows you to then control and monitor the cogs remotely via your web browser.

Installation

npm install -g @bishopcais/cog-cli

Note: Running this line as-is will automatically pull the latest version down from NPM and install it onto your machine.

Usage

$ cog --help
Usage: cog [options] [command]

Options:
  -v, --version                          output the version number
  -h, --help                             output usage information

Commands:
  config [options] [variable] [value]    Show or set config variable.
  launch                                 Launches daemon.
  load [options] [file]                  Load and run a cog application.
  reload [options] [file]                Stop, unload and load cog again.
  start [options] <cog_id|path>          Start a stopped cog.
  stop [options] <cog_id|path>           Stop a running cog.
  unload|remove [options] <cog_id|path>  Unload a stopped cog.
  status [cog_id]                        Show status of all cogs, or details of specified cog.
  output [cog_id]                        Listen to stdout/stderr output from all cogs or a specified cog.
  ip                                     Print out the default IP address cog-cli will use.
  quit                                   Exit daemon, and terminates all of its cogs.

Additionally, for each command, you may use --help to view additional information, for example cog config --help.

Loading Cogs

When using cog load or cog reload or cog unload functions, the [file] argument is optional and if omitted, it will default to looking for a cog.json file in your current working directory (e.g, equivalent to cog load cog.json). Alternatively you can pass it a filename and it will load that file from your current working directory, e.g. cog load sample-cog/cog.json. Finally, if you pass it a directory, it will recursively search through the directory, attempting to find a cog.json at each additional directory it finds. This allows one to load multiple cogs at once, such that if you have the following structure:

.
|- sample-cog
|  |- cog.json
+- sample-cog-2
|  |- cog.json

By doing cog load . in the door directory, this will be translated as executing cog load sample-cog/cog.json and cog load sample-cog-2/cog.json. This can be combined with symlinks effectively to create "environments" that cog-cli can be used to load. For example, assume the following folder structure:

.
|- sample-cog
|  |- cog.json
+- sample-cog-2
|  |- cog.json
+- sample-cog-3
|  |- cog.json
+- environments
|  +- environment-1
|  |  |- sample-cog -> ../../sample-cog
|  |  |- sample-cog-2 -> ../../sample-cog-2
|  +- environment-2
|  |  |- sample-cog -> ../../sample-cog
|  |  |- sample-cog-3 -> ../../sample-cog-3

and so you can now effectively do cog load environments/environment-1 or cog load environments/environment-2 to spin up cogs in different configurations effectively.

Configuration

For cog-cli to function, you must configure it so that it can communicate with cog-server. To accomplish this, you will need to run the cog config command, setting each value appropriately. Using just cog config will show all available config variables and their current values. The username and key fields should correspond with the values you set for a user within cog-server. The host value is used as a default value to use for watcher key/value in the cog.json file if it is omitted.

cog.json

cog-cli utilizes a cog.json file to specify the various settings that a cog should use when loaded.

An example cog.json file is shown below:

{
  "run": "node",
  "args": [ "child.js" ],
  "watcher": "http://localhost:7777",

  "type": "Cog",
  "id": "instance-1",
  "tags": ["red", "blue", "green"],

  "host": "http://cel-service",
  "port": "8888"
}

Note: If you leave out the host key but specify a port, cog-cli will automatically fill in the host value for you using the first non-internal IPv4 address it finds via the os.networkInterfaces function. You can use the cog ip command to see what that IP address will be.

Note: If watcher is omitted, it defaults to http://localhost:7777.

Contributing

We are open to contributions.

• The software is provided under the MIT license. Contributions to this project are accepted under the same license.
• Please also ensure that each commit in the series has at least one Signed-off-by: line, using your real name and email address. The names in the Signed-off-by: and Author: lines must match. If anyone else contributes to the commit, they must also add their own Signed-off-by: line. By adding this line the contributor certifies the contribution is made under the terms of the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO).
• Questions, bug reports, et cetera are raised and discussed on the issues page.
• Please make merge requests into the master branch.