Homerun

Turn npm package scripts into CLI commands

Since npm 2.0, you can pass arguments to scripts... wait... what if you could use that for creating CLIs? Homerun is a little experiment that lets you just do that. If you need more, I highly recommend minimist.

Usage

Let's say you have a script called add that you can run this way:

npm run add -- 1 2
3

Install homerun

npm install homerun --save

Add it to your package.json

{
  "name": "cli"
  "bin": "./node_modules/.bin/homerun" // <-- here
  "scripts": {
    "add": "node commands/add"
  }
}

Now, without any other setup, if you npm link or npm publish you get a CLI for free:

cli add 1 2
3

And of course, while you develop, you can still use npm run add -- 1 2 to test your command.

Options

Homerun will use these scripts in case no command is provided or matches.

"scripts": {
  "index": "node commands/index"  // no command provided
  "unknown": "node commands/help" // unknown command provided
}

Module

If you need to customize, homerun can be used as a module.

// index.js
var homerun = require('homerun')
var scripts = require('./package.json').scripts

homerun(scripts, process.argv).spawn()

// package.json
{
  "bin": "index.js"
}

Test

To test your commands, you can use homerun.exec()

var assert = require('assert')

var argv = [,, 'add', '1', '2']

homerun(scripts, argv).exec(function(err, stdout, stderr) {
  assert.equal(err, null)
  assert.equal('', stderr)
  assert.equal('3\n', stdout)
})

Limit

Homerun doesn't support multiple commands. For example, echo foo && echo bar won't work.

License

MIT - Typicode