loopback-console

A command-line tool for Loopback app debugging and administration.

The loopback-console is a command-line tool for interacting with your Loopback app. It works like the built-in Node REPL, but provides a handful of features that are helpful when debugging or generally working within your app's environment. Features include,

• Easy availability of your app's models and important handles. See Available Handles
• Automatic promise resolution, for intuitive access to Loopback ORM responses.

Installation

The console can be used easily by just installing it and running its binary:

   npm install loopback-console --save
   $(npm bin)/loopback-console

Assuming you install it within your project, the default setup will detect your project's location and bootstrap your app based on your current working directory. if you'd instead like to load a specific app in the console, execute it with a path to the app's main script:

   loopback-console [path/to/server/server.js]

The recommended configuration is to add the console to your package.json scripts, as follows:

  "scripts": {
    "console": "loopback-console"
  }

Once added you may launch the console by running,

   npm run console

Examples

The loopback-console makes it easy to work with your Loopback models.

loopback > .models
User, AccessToken, ACL, RoleMapping, Role, Widget
loopback > Widget.count()
0
loopback > Object.keys(Widget.definition.properties)
[ 'name', 'description', 'created', 'id' ]
loopback > w = Widget.create({ name: 'myWidget01', description: 'My new Widget'})
{ name: 'myWidget01', description: 'My new Widget', id: 1 }
loopback > Widget.count()
1
loopback > w.name='super-widget';
'super-widget'
loopback > w.save()
{ name: 'super-widget', description: 'My new Widget' }
loopback > Widget.find()
[ { name: 'super-widget', description: 'My new Widget', id: 1 } ]

Available Handles

By default the loopback-console provides a few handles designed to make it easier to work with your project,

• Models: All of your app's Loopback models are available directly. For example, User. Type .models to see a list.
• app: The Loopback app handle.
• cb: A simplified callback function that,
  • Has signature function (err, result)
  • Stores results on the REPL's result handle.
  • Prints errors with console.error and results with console.log
• result: The storage target of the cb function

Advanced Setup

In some cases you may want to perform operations each time the console loads to better integrate it with your app's environment.

To integrate loopback-console with your app the following additions must be made to your app's server/server.js file,

1. Include the library: const LoopbackConsole = require('loopback-console');
2. Integrate it with server execution:

// LoopbackConsole.activated() checks whether the conditions are right to launch
// the console instead of the web server. The console can be activated by passing
// the argument --console or by setting env-var LOOPBACK_CONSOLE=1
if (LoopbackConsole.activated()) {
  LoopbackConsole.start(app, {
    prompt: "my-app # ",
    // Other REPL or loopback-console config
  });
} else if (require.main === module) {
  app.start();
}

Configuration

By integrating the loopback-console you also gain the ability to configure its functionality. The following configuration directives are supported,

• quiet: Suppresses the help text on startup and the automatic printing of result.
• historyPath: The path to a file to persist command history. Use an empty string ('') to disable history.
• All built-in configuration options for Node.js REPL, such as prompt.
• handles: Disable any default handles, or pass additional handles that you would like available on the console.

Note, command history path can also be configured with the env-var LOOPBACK_CONSOLE_HISTORY.

Contributors

• Heath Morrison (doublemarked)

Special thanks to the following people for their testing and feedback,

• Pulkit Singhal (pulkitsinghal)

License

loopback-console uses the MIT license. See LICENSE for more details.