Tiny Bin

A library for building tiny and beautiful command line apps.

Features

At a high level this package provides:

• A tiny library, that has no third-party dependencies, that can be bundled, for great startup performance.
• Beautiful colored and detailed help pages. Colors can be turned off also.
• Automatic update notifications, that will notify the user of an update right before exiting.
• Automatic package name and version detection, so you don't even need to provide those.
• Automatic typo detection, it will suggest the closest command/option if you mistype one.
• Automatic help and --help handling, both for the bin and for each command.
• Automatic --version and -v handling.
• Automatic --no-color and --no-colors handling.

This library has 5 primitives, bins, commands, options, arguments and actions:

• Bin:
  • A bin is the entry point of your command line app, you can define multiple bins.
  • Each bin has a name, a description, and a few built-in commands (default, help, version).
  • Each bin can have multiple custom commands.
  • The action for the default command is customizable.
• Command:
  • A command is the function that will be executed when running your bin.
  • Each command has a name, a description, and an automatically generated usage example.
  • Each command can optional have a section, which will be used to group commands in the help page.
  • Each command can optionally be hidden from the help page.
  • Each command can optionally have custom usage examples.
  • Each command can have multiple options.
  • Each command can have multiple arguments.
  • Each command has an action, which is your actual function that will called by the command.
• Option:
  • An option is a flag that can be passed to your command.
  • Each option has a name, a description, and an implicit type (boolean or string).
  • Each option can optional have a section, which will be used to group options in the help page.
  • Each option can optionally be hidden from the help page.
  • Each option can optionally be marked as deprecated, causing it to be dimmed in the help page.
  • Each option can optionally be marked as eager, so it will consume multiple consecutive values.
  • Each option can optionally be marked as required, so the library will error if it's not provided.
  • Each option can optionally have a default value.
  • Each option can optionally have an explicit list of allowed values.
  • Each option can have multiple longhands (e.g. --foo) and multiple shorthands (e.g. -f).
  • Each provided longhand and shorthand for an option is automatically aliased to all the others.
  • Each non-boolean option must receive at least one value.
  • Each variadic option can receive multiple values (e.g. <values...>).
• Argument:
  • An argument is a value that can be passed to your command.
  • Each argument has a name and a description.
  • Each argument can be marked as required, so the library will error if it's not provided.
  • Each variadic argument (e.g. <args...>) can receive multiple values.
• Action:
  • An action is the function that will be called when running your command.
  • It will receive the following arguments:
    • The options object, containing all options for which the library has a value.
    • The arguments array, contaning an array of strings passed to your command.
    • The passthrough arguments array, containing an array of strings passed to your command after the special -- separator.

Install

npm install --save tiny-bin

Usage

import bin from 'tiny-bin';

bin ( 'gitman', 'A simple yet powerful opinionated tool for managing repositories' )
  /* BIN OPTIONS */
  .colors ( false ) // Turn off colored output
  .package ( '@fabiospampinato/gitman', '1.2.3' ) // Set the package name and version number manually
  .autoExit ( false ) // Turn off the automatic process.exit call after action execution
  .autoUpdateNotifier ( false ) // Turn off the automatic update notifier
  /* GLOBAL COMMAND OPTIONS */
  .option ( '--silent, -s', 'Silence all output' )
  .option ( '--verbose, -V', 'Verbose output' )
  .option ( '--provider, -p <provider>', 'The provider to use', { default: 'github', enum: ['github', 'gitlab'] } )
  .option ( '--token, -t <token>', 'GitHub/GitLab personal access token', { required: true } )
  /* DEFAULT COMMAND ARGUMENTS */
  .argument ( '[user]', 'The name of the user' )
  .argument ( '<repo>', 'The name of the repository' )
  /* DEFAULT COMMAND ACTION */
  .action ( ( options, args, passthroughArgs ) => {
    console.log ( 'Default command executed' );
    console.log ( options );
    console.log ( args );
    console.log ( passthroughArgs );
  })
  /* CUSTOM COMMAND */
  .command ( 'clone', 'Clone a repository' )
  /* CUSTOM COMMAND OPTIONS */
  .option ( '--submodules', 'Clone submodules too' )
  /* CUSTOM COMMAND ARGUMENTS */
  .argument ( '[user]', 'The name of the user' )
  .argument ( '<repo>', 'The name of the repository' )
  /* CUSTOM COMMAND ACTION */
  .action ( ( options, args, passthroughArgs ) => {
    console.log ( 'Clone command executed' );
    console.log ( options );
    console.log ( args );
    console.log ( passthroughArgs );
  })
  /* EXECUTING THE BIN */
  .run ();

License

MIT © Fabio Spampinato