TohruMKDM / lit-cli

A simple module to aid in the creation of command line interfaces

lit-cli

A simple module to aid in the creation of command line interfaces

Information

I was bored one day with nothing to do so I randomly decided to port Linux's mv command to windows using luvi as window's equivalent move does not support all the things mv does.
But instead of parsing command-line arguments manually I decided to make a library to help me do it and the advantage is that this library should work for any project I may have in the future + help others build their own programs.
My mv port is hosted here

Installation

This module was originally intended for luvi so installing it from lit is incredibly easy.

lit install TohruMKDM/lit-cli

I have added support for PUC Lua and LuaJIT so you can also just clone the repository to use this library on those platforms

git clone https://github.com/TohruMKDM/lit-cli.git

Example

-- main.lua
-- Require the library
local cli = require('cli')

-- Create new program object named 'example' and set it's description
local program = cli.program:init('example')
    :setDescription('This is an example program.')
-- Create a new argument named 'path' and add it to the program
local path = cli.argument:init('path')
    :setDescription('The path to the file')
program:addArgument(path)
-- Create a new option named 'silent', set it's short option and add it to the program
local silent = cli.option:init('silent')
    :setDescription('If set then the operation will be done silently')
    :addShort('s')
program:addOption(silent)

-- Create the handler function
local function handler(prog, arguments, options)
    -- prog: The program object this handler belongs to.
    -- arguments: The parsed arguments
    -- options: The parsed options
    p('arguments', arguments)
    p('options', options)
end
program:setExecute(handler)

-- Handle command line arguments
return program:handler()

We are going to assume this is your main.lua file and you built your program using luvi ./ -o example.exe
example test

'arguments'    {path = 'test'}
'options'      {}

example test --silent

'arguments'    {path = 'test'}
'options'      {silent = true}

example test -s results in the same output\n example

Error: argument 'path' is required'
You can run 'example --help' if you need some help

Documentation

I'll finish this later.