gluegunplus

gluegunplus CLI

Gluegun Plus provides the first steps into developing language-agnostic and framework-agnostic CLIs. The CLI is built from a command API definition, which is currently given in a json file. There is also provided validation functions so that these do not have to be independently written in each command handler.

1. Features

1. Inbuilt argument validation
2. Command API definition

2. Supported Languages and Toolkits

Language	Toolkit	Support
Node	Gluegun	✔
Go	Cobra	❌

3. Commands Structure

Example config.json

{
  "command1/c": {
    "description": "Command 1 Description",
    "__run": "command1Handler"
  },
  "command2/d": {
    "description": "Command 2 Description",
    "__run": { "func": "command2Handler", "args": { "a": true, "b": 4 } },
    "optional": {
      "a": "a argument supplied to command2Handler",
      "b": {
        "description": "b argument",
        "type": "int",
        "range": { "min": 1, "max": 10 },
        "default": 1
      }
    },
    "required": {
      "c": "A required arg"
    }
  },
  "command3": {
    "description": "Command 3 Description",
    "command4/d": {
      "description": "Command 4 Description",
      "__run": { "func": "command4Handler", "args": { "a": true, "b": 4 } },
      "optional": {
        "a": "a argument supplied to command4Handler",
        "b": {
          "description": "b argument",
          "type": "int",
          "range": { "min": 1, "max": 10 },
          "default": 1
        }
      },
      "required": {
        "c": "A required arg"
      }
    }
  }
}

The commands have a hierarchical structure. For example:

sample command1 
sample command2 
sample command3 command4

Each command/sub-command has the following sections:

Section	Description
command/alias	The command and the alias in the format cli rootcommand --subcommand1 --subcommandOfSubcommand1 ... --arg1 value. The commands and subcommands have an optional alias. They from the first part of the cli args supplied and they are supplied as args without a value. The command and the alias will do the same thing. Eg cli command1 is the same as cli c. Due to the hierarchical structure, arguments are processed in the order in which they are supplied. So that the following example will result in the execution of different functions: 1. cli c -c -d -c 1. and 2. cli c -d -e -c 1. The args after the root command arg are in order the subcommands in the hierarchy. The last subcommand has a "__run" object
__run	This gives the name, an optionally the arguments, to be supplied to the function to be run for this command. The name can be given either as a string, or in an object in the format: {"description": "", "type": "", "range": {"min":1, "max":10}}
description	String which gives the description of the command.
optional	optional args to be supplied for the command. Supplied in either the format: { "arg": "description"} or {"arg:{"decription:"", {...type configuration}}}

Supported Arg Types

• int
• float
• text
• email
• date
• boolean

int

An int type can be configured with a range object which has optionally a min and max value.

text

A text type can be configured with a length object. The value for a length object is either an integer for a fixed length string, or an object with a min and max value.

4. Usage

You can either use the github repo as a template.

Or

Create a gluegun project using

npx gluegun new projectName
cd projectName
npm link

and run from projectName directory

npx gluegunplus init

This modifies the gluegun directory by creating

1. root/config/commands.json with an sample commands file
2. corresponding command files for each command specified in the json file.

// the file to run...

After updating commands.json and

npx gluegunplus update

5. License

See LICENSE