cli

cli is a tool for rapidly building NodeJS command line apps

It includes a full featured opts/args parser + plugin support to add commonly used options.

Example

static.js - a static file server with daemon support (requires npm install creationix daemon)

#!/usr/bin/env node

var cli = require('cli').enable('status','daemon').setVersion('0.1.0');

cli.parse({
    log:     ['l', 'Enable logging'],
    port:    ['p', 'Listen on this port', 'number', 8080],
    serve:   [false, 'Serve static files from PATH', 'path', './public']
});

cli.main(function (args, options) {
    var server, middleware = [];
    
    if (options.log) {
        this.debug('Enabling logging');
        middleware.push(require('creationix/log')());
    }

    this.debug('Serving files from ' + options.serve);
    middleware.push(require('creationix/static')('/', options.serve, 'index.html'));
    
    server = this.createServer(middleware).listen(options.port);
    
    this.ok('Listening on port ' + options.port);
});

To output usage information

$ ./static.js --help

To create a daemon that serves files from /tmp, run

$ ./static.js -ld --serve=/tmp

Need to view the log? $ ./static.js -d log. Need to stop the daemon? $ ./static.js -d stop.

For those interested, here is the same app written in CoffeeScript.

For more examples, see ./examples.

Installation

cli.js is self-contained module so that you can easily bundle it with your app.

Alternatively, you can install cli with npm

$ npm install cli

Plugins / Addons

cli comes bundled with kof's node-natives and creationix' stack

To access any native node module, use

cli.native[module] //e.g. cli.native.path

To create a basic middleware stack, use

cli.createServer(middleware).listen(port)

Plugins are a way of adding common opts and can be enabled using cli.enable(plugin1, [plugin2, ...]);, and disabled using the equivalent disable(), e.g.

cli.enable('daemon','status');

Available plugins are:

help - enabled by default

Adds -h,--help to output auto-generated usage information

version - enabled by default

Adds -v,--version to output version information for the app.

Set the version using

cli.setVersion(version) //OR
cli.setVersion(path_to_packagejson);

If setVersion isn't called, cli will attempt to locate package.json in ./, ../, or ../../

status

Adds methods to output stylized/colored status messages to the console cli.info(msg), cli.debug(msg), cli.ok(msg), cli.error(msg), cli.fatal(msg)

--debug is required to show any messages output with cli.debug(msg)

-s,--silent will omit all status messages (except for fatal)

daemon - requires npm install daemon

Adds -d,--daemon ARG for daemonizing the process and controlling the resulting daemon

ARG can be either start (default), stop, restart, pid (outputs the daemon's pid if it's running), or log (output the daemon's stdout+stderr)

timeout

Adds -t,--timeout N to exit the process after N seconds with an error

catchall

Adds -c,--catch to catch and output uncaughtExceptions and resume execution

LICENSE

(MIT license)

Copyright (c) 2010 Chris O'Hara [e-mail]

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.