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 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 options type inference from the provided options.
- 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 incompatible with some others.
- Each option can optionally be marked as required, so the library will error if it's not provided.
- Each option can optionally be marked as explicitly overriding a previously defined option.
- 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. ).
- 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. ) 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

``sh
npm install tiny-bin
`

Usage

`ts
import bin from 'tiny-bin';

bin ( 'gitman', 'A simple yet powerful opinionated tool for managing repositories' )
/ BIN CONFIGURATION /
.config ({
package: '@fabiospampinato/gitman', // Manually set the package name
version: '1.2.3', // Manually set the version number
colors: false, // Turn off colored output
autoExit: false // Turn off the automatic process.exit call after action execution
})
/ GLOBAL COMMAND OPTIONS /
.option ( '--silent, -s', 'Silence all output' )
.option ( '--verbose, -V', 'Verbose output' )
.option ( '--provider, -p ', 'The provider to use', { default: 'github', enum: ['github', 'gitlab'] } )
.option ( '--token, -t ', 'GitHub/GitLab personal access token', { required: true } )
.option ({ name: '--example, -e ', description: 'An example option configuration provided as a single object' })
/ DEFAULT COMMAND ARGUMENTS /
.argument ( '[user]', 'The name of the user' )
.argument ( '', '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 ( '', '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