Extends the CLI

As the rest of our ecosystem, the CLI is modular and you can extends it as you want.

The CLI features are declared inside a sugar.json file at the root of your package. When I say package it can be a private project as a published one on NPM for example.

The idea behind that is to let you extends the CLI with features you need or features you think can be useful for others.

How it works?

When you launch the sugar CLI, it will search for all the sugar.json files at all the packages root, then by reading each of them, build his list of available commands.

Your project structure can be something like:

| src
| package.json
| sugar.json

Simple example

Consider implementing a wonderful command that will simply display hello world on the screen.

First

Create the sugar.jcon file at your project root and fill it like so:

Note that you can make uses of the %moduleSystem token in your process property that will be replaced by either esm, or cjs depending on the environment you're in.

This will tell the CLI that a mySoCool stack exists with a command(s) prettyCommand.

Second

Then you need to create the src/node/prettyCommand.cli.js file with this content:

This example will work fine and display hello world on the screen.

Using your command

To make use of your command, make sure to launch it either through your project where the sugar.json that declare it stands, or in a project where your package has been installed.

Then, simply launch:

As your prettyCommand has been declared as the "defaultAction", you can also launch it like so:

Going further

Some additional features can be applied like a documentation when the users enters sugar mySoCool.prettyCommand -h.

For that, simply add the interface property inside your sugar.json file like so:

Then create the src/node/prettyCommandInterface.ts with this as content:

This make use of the @coffeekraken/s-interface package that let you define interfaces to describe things like a parameter object, etc...

Note that this SInterface class can be used as well for other things and works very well with our SProcess class from the @coffeekraken/s-process package.

I let you check the @coffeekraken/s-interface documentation inside his own package.

Now when you launch your command with sugar mySoCool.prettyCommand --help you will have a nicely displayed documentation.