answers

Cascading Config Provider

Answers is the easiest way to give your Node.js CLI config sourcing superpowers.

The cascade for sourcing config was directly inspired by Dominic Tarr's RC module.

Given an application named appname, answers will source config in the following order:

• command line arguments
• environment variables prefixed with ${appname}_
• .${appname}rc relative to your current working directly, and then any .${appname}rc in parent directories of your current working directory.
• $HOME/.${appname}rc
• $HOME/.${appname}/config
• $HOME/.config/${appname}
• $HOME/.config/${appname}/config
• /etc/${appname}rc
• /etc/${appname}/config
• the defaults options object

All configuration sources will be merged via sugarmerge. You should read up on what this means.

If you passed the prompts option, any unfulfilled prompts will fire off and will ask the user for the missing config.

Usage

(async () => {

    const answers = await require('answers')({

        // your application's name
        name: 'foo',

        // optional inquirer prompts
        prompts: [
            {
                type: 'input',
                name: 'name',
                message: 'what is your name?'
            }
        ]

    });

    console.log(answers);

})();

Background & Credits

The config sourcing order was inspired by Dominic Tarr's rc package. Answers has two key enhancements on top of rc: it allows for overriding and amending values in deep inside complex data structures and it has the ability to ask the user for any missing config options by providing a collection of inquirer prompts in the options object.

License

MIT