pageant

Smart and seamless colored console output across all platforms.

No configuration necessary.

[ And no built-ins were harmed in the making of this movie! ]

ABOUT

I wanted to enhance the console output of a project I was working on. I needed color, certainly... but I also needed a smarter way to display more complex, structured information in the console e.g. table data or JS objects.

I looked at what was available on NPM and GitHub and searched for a single solution. After trying out and experimenting with about twenty different packages - and finding all of them missing something essential. I needed something:-

• More capable than chalk.js, color.js, colour.js, col.js, etc etc...

..."Hey, where's my color orange?"

• More standard than things like prettyjson

..."Look, I just wanted standard JSON... not this YAMLized 'something'!!!"

• Lighter than terminal-kit.

..."I'm asking for better console output... not a rocket-ship with six different kitchen sinks and a dog kennel!"

• And to work everywhere just the same. At least in both the browser and with Node.

"Ok, NPM search results: 0 ...help!!!"

So, finding nothing suitable... I did what any good coder would do... and wrote the solution myself!

I share it with you now... and I've called it Pageant! (After the ye old medieval-ly colorful procession thingies...)

But unlike the name, the code is implemented in - very modern - and very vanilla, JavaScript!

FEATURES

Ok then, go on... amaze me!

• A safe drop-in replacement for the built-in console - supports all standard functionality.
• Enriches, formats, syntax-hightlights the display of all data - for greater clarity and readability.
• Supports all JS values, objects and code - as well as JSON objects and arrays.
• Uses the full color palette available for 16, 256 and TrueColor capable consoles.
• Works well out-the-box - but can easily be customised by code or by config file.
• Simple to use.

INSTALLATION

npm install pageant

USAGE

Pageant is safe to use with existing code... just import and assign Pageant at the top of your script:-

    const Pageant = require("pageant");
    const console = new Pageant();

Then, just as you would normally:-

console.log("Hi there!!!");
 
console.log("%s %s!!!", "hi", "there");
 
console.log(123, 456);
 
console.warn("Warning: Ooh 'eck, something's happenin'.");
 
console.error("Error: Total, complete and absolute system failure and melt-down! Exiting the building is advised.");

or if you want enriched data you can:-

let valueA = 1;
let valueB = "1";
console.info(valueA);
console.info(valueB);
 
console.info({
    name: "Almost",
    middle: "A",
    last: "Person",
    isOnline: true
});
 
let arrayObjects = [
    {id: 10, first: "John", second: "Smith", age: 24, active: true},
    {id: 11, first: "John", second: "Harlow", age: 41, active: true},
    {id: 12, first: "Sally", second: "May", age: 28, active: false}
];
console.table(arrayObjects);

And you will also find that the normal 'dumb' alias of console.debug()... isn't so dumb anymore!

console.config.debug = true;
console.debug("This message will shows as debug-mode is set.");
 
console.config.debug = false;
console.debug("This message will no longer show in the production build.");

CONFIGURATION

TODO 
July 2017 - Currently Pageant Node functionality is being completed.
Browser support is still only partial at present.

DOCUMENTATION

Documentation about usage and configuration can be found in Wiki:Configuration page.

LICENSE

Pageant was written by Kyle Alexis Sargeant and is shared under the LGPL-3.0 license.

Thus, you can use it freely in anything - both open-source or commercial - without any need to disclose your own code.