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troll-opt

0.7.1 • Public • Published

Build Status Troll-opt

A powerful-but-simple command line parser for Node.js apps, inspired by William Morgan's awesome Trollop gem for Ruby.

Troll-opt allows you to define and parse command line args in one simple definition. One line per opt: that's all you need. No chaining long series of commands together, no multiline parsing definitions.

Using it

A simple single option defintion looks like this:

(new Troll()).options(function(t) {
  t.opt("word", "something to talk about", {default: 'cake'})
});

Or, a slightly more complicated definition that takes three different arguments and defines a help banner:

Troll = require('troll-opt').Troll
 
opts = (new Troll()).options(function(troll) {
  troll.banner('Web listener that always responds with a defined message');
  troll.opt('errors',  'Issue random errors to some responses', { default: true });
  troll.opt('name',    'The name of the application', { type: 'string', required: true });
  troll.opt('code',    'The normal response code to generate', { short: 'o', default: 200 });
});

This in turn will supply the following help document when the calling application is invoked with the help flag: app.js --help.

Usage: app.js [options]
  Web listener that always responds with a defined message
  --code, -o <n>: The normal response code to generate (default: 200)
    --errors, -e: Issue random errors to some responses (default: false)
  --name, -n <s>: The name of the application (required)
          --help: Display this help text

If we pass that a command line like:

$ ./test.js --name="something" --errors --code 201

or:

$ ./test.js --name something --errors --code 201

or:

$ ./test.js -n something -e -o 201

we then get the following contents of opts as defined above:

{ name: 'something', errors: true, code: 201 }

Multi-Word Arguments

Troll-opt will do camelCase conversion of options for you for mulit-word command line arguments.

$ ./test.js --lib-path /usr/lib

Generates the options object:

{ libPath: '/usr/lib' }

You assign these in the definition in camelCase and the command line parser does the translation from lib-path to libPath before doing the lookup:

opts = (new Troll()).options(function(troll) {
  troll.opt('libPath', 'Path to the libraries', { default: '/usr/lib/' });

Remaining Arguments

Any arguments that are supplied at the end of the command line, but which are not options to the previous argument are available via the following mechanism.

Given that the following command is issued:

$ ./test.js --lib-path /usr/lib some-extra-argument another-one

You will need to keep the handle on the original Troll instance. This can then be used to access the remaining arguments on the command line like so:

troll = new Troll()
troll.options(function(troll) {
  troll.opt('libPath', 'Path to the libraries', { default: '/usr/lib/' });

troll.argv will then contain:

[ 'some-extra-argument', 'another-one' ]

Features

Troll-opt, like Trollop, gives you a lot of win for not much work. Here are some of the things you get for free:

  • Automatic assignment of defaults
  • Automatic assignment of short flags (e.g. -n for --now)
  • Automatic checking for required args
  • Automatic type conversion for basic types
  • Multiple command line syntaxes (getopt short, getopt long with and without =)
  • Nice looking usage output
  • Conversion of multi-word command line arguments to camelCase

Future Additions

  • Trollop 2.0-like --no-option and --option handling for flags

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Version

0.7.1

License

MIT

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