CMND

Command Line Interface Utility for Node.js

CMND is a package that lets you easily create CLI tools in Node.js using idiomatic ES6 syntax (Node 4+). It's also simple to create associated manual (help) pages for each command.

This module was initially built for Nodal, but can be used anywhere you'd like.

Usage

To use CMND, first install it in your Node project with npm install cmnd --save.

Next, modify your project's package.json to include:

"bin": {
  "mycli": "./cli.js"
}

Where mycli is the intended name of your command in the CLI.

Now create a file: ./cli.js and folder ./commands:

#!/usr/bin/env node

'use strict';

const CommandLineInterface = require('cmnd').CommandLineInterface;
const CLI = new CommandLineInterface();

CLI.load(__dirname, './commands');
CLI.run(process.argv.slice(2));

Finally, populate your commands directory with your commands, here's an example file: ./commands/example.js

module.exports = (() => {

  'use strict';

  const Command = require('cmnd').Command;

  class ExampleCommand extends Command {

    constructor() {

      super('example');

    }

    help() {

      return {
        description: 'An example command',
        args: ['example_arg1', 'example_arg2'],
        flags: {flag: 'An example flag'},
        vflags: {vflag: 'An example verbose flag'}
      };

    }

    run(args, flags, vflags, callback) {

      // Run code here.
      // To throw an error, use: callback(new Error(msg))
      // To optionally return a result, use: callback(null, result)

      callback(null);

    }

  }

  return ExampleCommand;

})();

Creating manual pages (help)

View all the commands available to your CLI with mycli help where mycli is the intended name of your command in the CLI. To modify help information, change the return value of the help() method for each command.

Creating Subcommands

To subclass a command (i.e. mycli command_name:sub_name) simply change the contructor() method in your command to the following:

constructor() {

  super('command_name', 'sub_name');

}

Running your commands

Each command has a run() method which takes three arguments: args, flags, and vflags.

args

args is the array of arguments, passed before any flags.

i.e. mycli command alpha beta would populate args with ['alpha', 'beta']

flags

flags is an object containing any flags (prefixed with -), where each entry is an array of values passed after the flag

i.e. mycli command -f my flag would populate vflags with {f: ['my', 'flag']}

vflags

vflags works identically to flags, but with "verbose flags" (prefixed with --).

Additional notes

All argument arrays passed to args or any flags or vflags options will be separated by spaces, except in the case of quotation marks. Use quotation marks to specify an argument with spaces in it.

i.e. mycli command -f "argument one" argument_two

Acknowledgements

Thanks for checking out the library! Feel free to submit issues or PRs if you'd like to see more features.

Follow me on Twitter, @keithwhor.

Feel free to check out more of my GitHub projects.