liftoff

Launch your command line tool with ease.

What is it?

See this blog post, or read on.

Say you're writing a CLI tool. Let's call it hacker. You want to configure it using a Hackerfile. This is node, so you install hacker locally for each project you use it in. But, in order to get the hacker command in your PATH, you also install it globally.

Now, when you run the hacker command, you want it to use the Hackerfile in your current directory, and the local installation of hacker next to it. It'd be nice if it traversed up your folders until it found a Hackerfile—for those times when you're not in the root directory of your project. Heck, you might even want to launch it from a folder outside of your project by manually specifying a working directory. Liftoff manages this for you.

So, everything is working great. Now you can find your local hacker and Hackerfile with ease. Unfortunately, it turns out you've authored your Hackerfile in coffee-script, or some other JS variant. In order to support that, you have to load the compiler for it, and then register the extension for it with node. Good news, Liftoff can do that too.

API

constructor(opts)

Create an instance of Liftoff to invoke your application.

An example utilizing all options:

var Hacker = new Liftoff({
  name: 'hacker',
  moduleName: 'hacker',
  configName: 'hackerfile',
  addExtensions: ['.anything'],
  processTitle: 'hacker',
  cwdFlag: 'cwd',
  configPathFlag: 'hackerfile',
  preloadFlag: 'require',
  completionFlag: 'completion',
  completions: function (type) {
    console.log('Completions not implemented.');
  }
});

opts.name

Sugar for setting processTitle, moduleName, configName & configPathFlag automatically.

Type: String Default: null

These are equivalent:

new Liftoff({
  processTitle: 'hacker',
  moduleName: 'hacker',
  configName: 'hackerfile',
  configPathFlag: 'hackerfile'
});

new Liftoff({name:'hacker'});

opts.moduleName

Sets which module your application expects to find locally when being run.

Type: String Default: null

opts.configName

Sets the name of the configuration file Liftoff will attempt to find. Case-insensitive.

Type: String Default: null

opts.addExtensions

Explicitly add custom extensions to include when searching for a configuration file. Node supports .js, .json & .node natively, so there is no need to add these.

An example usage for this setting would be to add an rc extension. e.g. with a configName of .myapp, you want Liftoff to look for .myapp{rc,.js,.json,.node}

Type: Array Default: []

opts.processTitle

Sets what the process title will be.

Type: String Default: null

opts.cwdFlag

Sets what flag to use for altering the current working directory. For example, myapp --cwd ../ would invoke your application as though you'd called it from the parent of your current directory.

Type: String Default: cwd

opts.configPathFlag

Sets what flag to use for defining the path to your configfile. For example, myapp --myappfile ../Myappfile.js would explicitly specify the location of your config file.

Type: String Default: same as configName

opts.modulePathFlag

Sets what flag to use for defining the path to your locally installed module. For example, myapp --myappdir ~/ would specify the location of your config file. This option overrides cwdFlag.

Type: String Default: same as configName

opts.preloadFlag

Sets what flag to use for pre-loading modules. For example, myapp --require coffee-script would require a local version of coffee-script (if available) before attempting to find your configuration file. If your required module registers a new require.extension, it will be included as an option when looking for a file matching configName.

Type: String Default: "require"

opts.completions(type)

A method to handle bash/zsh/whatever completions.

Type: Function Default: null

events

require(name, module)

Emitted when a module is pre-loaded.

var Hacker = new Liftoff({name:'hacker'});
Hacker.on('require', function (name, module) {
  console.log('Requiring external module: '+name+'...');
  // automatically register coffee-script extensions
  if (name === 'coffee-script') {
    module.register();
  }
});

requireFail(name, err)

Emitted when a requested module cannot be preloaded.

var Hacker = new Liftoff({name:'hacker'});
Hacker.on('requireFail', function (name, err) {
  console.log('Unable to load:', name, err);
});

launch(fn, argv)

fn(env)

A function to start your application. When invoked, this will be your instance of Liftoff. The env param will contain the following keys:

• argv: cli arguments, as parsed by minimist, or as passed in manually.
• cwd: the current working directory
• preload: an array of modules that liftoff tried to pre-load
• validExtensions: an array of supported extensions for your config file
• configNameRegex: the regular expression used to find your config file
• configPath: the full path to your configuration file (if found)
• configBase: the base directory of your configuration file (if found)
• modulePath: the full path to the local module your project relies on (if found)
• modulePackage: the contents of the local module's package.json (if found)

argv

Manually specify command line arguments. Useful for invoking the CLI programmatically.

Type: Object Default: null

Examples

Check out the hacker project to see a working example of this tool.

To try the example, do the following:

1. Install the sample project hacker with npm install -g hacker.
2. Make a Hackerfile.js with some arbitrary javascript it.
3. Install hacker next to it with npm install hacker.
4. Run hacker while in the same parent folder.

For extra credit, try writing your Hackerfile in coffeescript. Then, run hacker --require coffee-script. Make sure you install coffee-script locally, though.