supports-hyperlinks

What is supports-hyperlinks?

The supports-hyperlinks npm package is used to check if the terminal environment supports hyperlinks. This is useful for developers who want to include clickable links in their terminal applications, but need to ensure compatibility with the user's terminal emulator.

What are supports-hyperlinks's main functionalities?

Checking if hyperlinks are supported

This feature allows you to check if the standard output (stdout) and standard error (stderr) streams of the terminal support hyperlinks. The package exports an object with two properties: stdout and stderr, which are booleans indicating support.

const supportsHyperlinks = require('supports-hyperlinks');

if (supportsHyperlinks.stdout) {
  console.log('Terminal supports hyperlinks');
} else {
  console.log('Terminal does not support hyperlinks');
}

if (supportsHyperlinks.stderr) {
  console.log('Stderr supports hyperlinks');
}

Other packages similar to supports-hyperlinks

terminal-link

The terminal-link package allows you to create clickable links in the terminal. It is similar to supports-hyperlinks but goes a step further by providing a function to generate the actual hyperlink strings. It also internally checks if the terminal supports hyperlinks before creating one.

supports-color

While not directly related to hyperlinks, supports-color is similar in the sense that it checks for terminal capabilities, specifically color support. It is used to determine if the terminal supports different levels of color depth, which is useful for styling terminal output.

README

supports-hyperlinks

Detect whether a terminal emulator supports hyperlinks

Terminal emulators are starting to support hyperlinks. While many terminals have long detected URL's and linkified them, allowing you to Command-Click or Control-Click them to open a browser, you were forced to print the long unsightly URL's on the screen. As of spring 2017 a few terminals began supporting HTML like links, where the link text and destination could be specified separately.

This module allows you to detect if hyperlinks are supported in the current Terminal.

As this is a new development, we anticipate the list of supported Terminals to grow rapidly. Please open an issue or submit a PR as new Terminals implement support.

Install

npm install supports-hyperlinks

Usage

const supportsHyperlinks = require('supports-hyperlinks');

if (supportsHyperlinks.stdout) {
	console.log('Terminal stdout supports hyperlinks');
}

if (supportsHyperlinks.stderr) {
	console.log('Terminal stderr supports hyperlinks');
}

API

Returns an Object with a stdout and stderr property for testing either streams. Each property is a boolean, indicating whether or not hyperlinks are supported.

Info

Obeys the --no-hyperlinks, --hyperlink=always, and --hyperlink=never CLI flags.

Can be overridden by the user with the flags --hyperlinks=always and --no-hyperlinks. For situations where using those flags are not possible, add the environment variable FORCE_HYPERLINK=1 to forcefully enable hyperlinks or FORCE_HYPERLINK=0 to forcefully disable. The use of FORCE_HYPERLINK overrides all other hyperlink support checks.

Related

• hyperlinker: Write hyperlinks for the Terminal.

License

MIT © James Talmage