@inquirer/editor

@inquirer/editor

Prompt that'll open the user preferred editor with default content and allow for a convenient multi-line input controlled through the command line.

The editor launched is the one defined by the user's EDITOR environment variable.

Installation

npm	yarn
npm install @inquirer/prompts	yarn add @inquirer/prompts
Or
npm install @inquirer/editor	yarn add @inquirer/editor

Usage

import { editor } from '@inquirer/prompts';
// Or
// import editor from '@inquirer/editor';

const answer = await editor({
  message: 'Enter a description',
});

Options

Property	Type	Required	Description
message	string	yes	The question to ask
default	string	no	Default value which will automatically be present in the editor
validate	string => boolean | string | Promise<boolean | string>	no	On submit, validate the content. When returning a string, it'll be used as the error message displayed to the user. Note: returning a rejected promise, we'll assume a code error happened and crash.
postfix	string	no (default to .txt)	The postfix of the file being edited. Adding this will add color highlighting to the file content in most editors.
file	IFileOptions	no	Exposes the external-editor package options to configure the temporary file.
waitForUserInput	boolean	no (default to true)	Open the editor automatically without waiting for the user to press enter. Note that this mean the user will not see the question! So make sure you have a default value that provide guidance if it's unclear what input is expected.
theme	See Theming	no	Customize look of the prompt.

Theming

You can theme a prompt by passing a theme object option. The theme object only need to includes the keys you wish to modify, we'll fallback on the defaults for the rest.

type Theme = {
  prefix: string | { idle: string; done: string };
  spinner: {
    interval: number;
    frames: string[];
  };
  style: {
    message: (text: string, status: 'idle' | 'done' | 'loading') => string;
    error: (text: string) => string;
    help: (text: string) => string;
    key: (text: string) => string;
  };
  validationFailureMode: 'keep' | 'clear';
};

validationFailureMode defines the behavior of the prompt when the value submitted is invalid. By default, we'll keep the value allowing the user to edit it. When the theme option is set to clear, we'll remove and reset to the default value or empty string.

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Simon Boudrias (twitter: @vaxilart)
Licensed under the MIT license.

Similar packages

Other packages similar to @inquirer/editor

inquirer

Inquirer.js is a collection of common interactive command line user interfaces. It provides a variety of prompt types, including input, confirm, list, and more. While @inquirer/editor focuses specifically on text editing, Inquirer.js offers a broader range of prompt types for different user inputs.

prompt-sync

Prompt-sync is a simple synchronous prompt for node.js. It allows for basic user input from the command line. Unlike @inquirer/editor, it does not support opening an external editor for text input, making it more suitable for simple, short inputs.

readline-sync

Readline-sync provides synchronous readline for node.js. It allows for reading user input from the command line, similar to prompt-sync. However, it does not support opening an external editor for editing text, which is a key feature of @inquirer/editor.