cliff

CLI output formatting tools: "Your CLI Formatting Friend".

Installation

Installing npm (node package manager)

  curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

Installing cliff

  [sudo] npm install cliff

Motivation

Cliff is the swiss army knife of CLI formatting tools. It is based on highly flexible and powerful libraries:

• winston: A multi-transport async logging library for node.js
• eyes: A customizable value inspector for node.js
• colors: Get colors in your node.js console like what

Usage

There are a number of methods available in Cliff for common logging tasks in command-line tools. If you're looking for more usage, checkout the examples in this repository:

1. Inspecting Objects
2. Logging rows of data

Inspecting Objects

cliff.inspect(obj)

The inspect method is a lightweight wrapper to a pre-configured eyes inspector. Here is how it is created:

cliff.inspect = eyes.inspector({ stream: null,
  styles: {               // Styles applied to stdout
    all:     null,        // Overall style applied to everything
    label:   'underline', // Inspection labels, like 'array' in `array: [1, 2, 3]`
    other:   'inverted',  // Objects which don't have a literal representation, such as functions
    key:     'grey',      // The keys in object literals, like 'a' in `{a: 1}`
    special: 'grey',      // null, undefined...
    number:  'blue',      // 0, 1, 2...
    bool:    'magenta',   // true false
    regexp:  'green',     // /\d+/
  }
});

If you wish to change the coloring of objects that are logged using cliff you only need to override cliff.inspect with a new eyes inspector.

cliff.putObject(obj, [rewriters, padding])

The putObject method is a simple helper function for prefixing and styling inspected object output from eyes. Here's a quick sample:

var cliff = require('cliff');

cliff.putObject({
  literal: "bazz",
  arr: [
    "one",
    2,
  ],
  obj: {
    host: "localhost",
    port: 5984,
    auth: {
      username: "admin",
      password: "password"
    }
  }
});

The resulting output on the command-line would be (sadly the colors do not translate):

$ node examples/put-object.js 
data:   {
data:       arr: [ 'one', 2 ],
data:       literal: 'bazz',
data:       obj: {
data:           host: 'localhost',
data:           port: 5984,
data:           auth: { username: 'admin', password: 'password' }
data:       }
data:   }

Logging rows of data

cliff.stringifyRows(rows, colors) Takes a set of Arrays and row headers and returns properly formatted and padded rows.

cliff.putRows(level, rows, colors) Similar to stringifyRows, but it will log to the console using winston at the specified level.

cliff.rowifyObjects(objs, properties, colors) Takes a set of Objects and the properties to extract from them and returns properly formatted and padded rows.

cliff.putObjectRows(level, objs, properties, colors) Similar to rowifyObjects, but it will log to the console using winston at the specified level. Here's a sample:

  var cliff = require('cliff');

  var objs = [], obj = {
    name: "bazz",
    address: "1234 Nowhere Dr.",
  };

  for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    objs.push({
      name: obj.name,
      address: obj.address,
      id: Math.random().toString()
    });
  }

  cliff.putObjectRows('data', objs, ['id', 'name', 'address']);

  $ node examples/put-object-rows.js 
  data:   id                   name address          
  data:   0.4157979858573526   bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 
  data:   0.7140450903680176   bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 
  data:   0.39573496161028743  bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 
  data:   0.8285396825522184   bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 
  data:   0.40711840940639377  bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 
  data:   0.7133555023465306   bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 
  data:   0.006228019250556827 bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 
  data:   0.5560931102372706   bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 
  data:   0.14310582634061575  bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 
  data:   0.4638693502638489   bazz 1234 Nowhere Dr. 

Run Tests

All of the winston tests are written in vows, and cover all of the use cases described above.

  npm test

Author: Charlie Robbins