ansicolors

What is ansicolors?

The ansicolors npm package is designed for adding color and style to text in the console. It provides a simple and lightweight way to enhance the readability and appearance of console output by applying various color and style transformations.

What are ansicolors's main functionalities?

Text Coloring

This feature allows you to change the color of your text output in the console. The example demonstrates how to make text appear in blue.

"const ansicolors = require('ansicolors');\nconsole.log(ansicolors.blue('Hello world in blue'));"

Text Styling

This feature enables you to apply styles such as bolding to your text output. The example shows how to make text bold.

"const ansicolors = require('ansicolors');\nconsole.log(ansicolors.bold('Bold text'));"

Background Coloring

With this feature, you can set the background color of your text output. The example illustrates setting a green background for the text.

"const ansicolors = require('ansicolors');\nconsole.log(ansicolors.bgGreen('Text with green background'));"

Other packages similar to ansicolors

chalk

Chalk is a popular npm package that offers a wide range of text styling options, including color, background color, and text styles. It has a more fluent interface compared to ansicolors, allowing for chaining styles together.

colors

The colors package also allows for adding colors and styles to text in the console. It extends String.prototype to add color and style methods directly to strings, which is a different approach compared to ansicolors that uses function calls.

README

ansicolors

Functions that surround a string with ansicolor codes so it prints in color.

In case you need styles, like bold, have a look at ansistyles.

Installation

npm install ansicolors

Usage

var colors = require('ansicolors');

// foreground colors
var redHerring = colors.red('herring');
var blueMoon = colors.blue('moon');
var brighBlueMoon = colors.brightBlue('moon');

console.log(redHerring);      // this will print 'herring' in red
console.log(blueMoon);        // this 'moon' in blue
console.log(brightBlueMoon);  // I think you got the idea

// background colors
console.log(colors.bgYellow('printed on yellow background'));
console.log(colors.bgBrightBlue('printed on bright blue background'));

// mixing background and foreground colors
// below two lines have same result (order in which bg and fg are combined doesn't matter)
console.log(colors.bgYellow(colors.blue('printed on yellow background in blue')));
console.log(colors.blue(colors.bgYellow('printed on yellow background in blue')));

Advanced API

ansicolors allows you to access opening and closing escape sequences separately.

var colors = require('ansicolors');

function inspect(obj, depth) {
  return require('util').inspect(obj, false, depth || 5, true);
}

console.log('open blue', inspect(colors.open.blue));
console.log('close bgBlack', inspect(colors.close.bgBlack));

// => open blue '\u001b[34m'
//    close bgBlack '\u001b[49m'

Tests

Look at the tests to see more examples and/or run them via:

npm explore ansicolors && npm test

Alternatives

ansicolors tries to meet simple use cases with a very simple API. However, if you need a more powerful ansi formatting tool, I'd suggest to look at the features of the ansi module.