clip

Clip is a port of most of the features of Express to CLI programming.

Many times we want to have complex use cases that are hard to express and routing along Express and Sugarskull seem to be an apt way of doing this. Another thing that we want to do in CLI programming often is use configuration files, flags, and parameters.

URLs

Urls are partitioned with '/' with a starting '/' at all times, they are url encoded, and accept ':param' and '*'

Requests

Request follow the req,res,next methodology. In the future chaining CLI requests should be easier (ie a clean + build could be done through clip by calling the corresponding urls).

Basic idea of handler arguments

req.env = process.env
req.flags = require('optimist').argv
req.config = require('nconf') + app.config(...)
req.prompt = require('prompt')
req.params = app.cli(':param') ...

res = require('winston') + require('cliff')

require('clip')() -> app

app.config

Determines where to find the config property for requests, uses reconf

app.flag(flag, handler)

Uses a middleware if a flag is set, uses optimist

app.cli(path||[path0,...],handler)

Executes a handler if the path is matched

app.param

CLI parameter preconditions ala express

#!/usr/local/bin/node

var clip = require('../');
var app = new clip();
var version = '0.0.1';
//
// SETUP
//
// Recursively find an 'app.json' file with reconf and add it to req.config
app.config('app.json',{flags:['conf']});
// Dont print stuff to console if --silent is set
app.flag('silent',function(req,res,next){
  res.remove(res.transports.Console);
  next();
});
// Always print out the app info (middleware)
app.use(function(req,res,next){
  res.info('App.js '+version);
  next();
});

app.usage(function(req,res,next) {
  res.info('commands: helloworld, info');
});

app.cli(['/hello','/helloworld'], function(req,res,next) {
  res.info('hello world!');
});

var utils = require('util');
app.cli(['/info','/dump'], function(req,res,next) {
  res.data(utils.inspect(req));
});

app.run();