Node CLI Router

Version 0.0.1

I build a lot of Node CLI tools and one of the things I've always wanted is a small router for user arguments.

I build a lot of websites using Sinatra and I love how in Sinatra you can route URLs to functions easily. I decided to take a go at doing something similar for command line flags and arguments for CLI tools.

Installation

npm install cli_router

In your scripts:

var router = require("cli_router");

## Examples

### Array Matching Syntax
Say we have a CLI tool which is run on the command line by running `foo`. We can match on arguments like so:

```js
router.match(["-a", "-b"], function() {
  // do something
});

router.go(process.argv);

That would match:

$ foo -a -b
$ foo -b -a

We can also use flags that take a parameter:

router.match(["-a", ["-b", "num"]], function(params) {
  console.log(params.num);
});
router.go(process.argv);

That would match:

$ foo -a -b 5
$ foo -b 5 -a

And in the callback, params.num === "5".

String Matching Syntax

If you don't like the array syntax, you can match with strings too. These two matches are equivalent, and would both set params.num in the callback function:

router.match(["-a", ["-b", "num"]], function(params) {...});
router.match("-a -b <num>", function(params) {...});

Of course, ordering doesn't matter. So all four of these are identical in terms of what they match:

["-a", ["-b", "num"]]
[["-b", "num"], "-a"]
"-a -b <num>"
"-b <num> -a"

 Multiple Routes

When a user string is matched by more than one defined route, the first route will take affect. For example:

router.match("-a <num> -b", function(){});
router.match("-b -a <num>", function(){});

When $ foo -a 5 -b is run, the first route will be used, because it was defined first.

Other Arguments

Some tools might take it one main argument and then allow flags to be set. For example:

$ foo test.txt -a -b -c

The CLI Router doesn't support this, but you can get around it yourself. Rather than calling router.go(process.argv), strip the user arguments out and call router.process on them. Using the above example, say the user passes in arguments such that process.argv looks like so:

["node", "/Users/MadeUp/yourscript.js", "test.txt", "-a", "-b"]

You can get the main argument, test.txt as process.argv[2], and then call router.process(process.argv.slice(3).join(" ")) to route based on the flags.

Contexts

If you care about the context in which the callback function is called, you can add it as a third parameter to match:

router.match("some string", function() {}, this);

Contributing

• Fork the repository
• Clone it down
• npm install
• npm test

Todo

• Optional Parameters
• Make it detect -abc as -a -b -c
• Fully document API (for now, the source and tests are pretty self documenting)

Changelog

v0.0.1

• initial release!