clac v0.1.3

CLaC - Command, Line and Conquer, a Node JS Server CLI command interface.

NOTE: until this hit's v1.0.0 consider this unstable. Things break, things may change, but it's being worked on.

Largely inspired by Laravel's artisan utility, this tool allows you to manage your running node service via a command line interface. Recache your routes, do some platform-specific maintenance or execute any code you want within a running noder instance.

Install

npm install --save clac

After that, you may want to get the executable out in your project root to be easier accessible. npm puts it into node_modules/.bin/conquer but that's a hassle to type. ln -s node_modules/.bin/conquer from your project root puts a symbolic link there, making it as easy as ./conquer or node conquer if you prefer that.

Another option would be to set it as a script in your package.json; so

{
  ...
  "scripts": {
    ...
    "conquer": "conquer"
  }
  ...
}

would allow you to run it like npm run conquer --.

Configuration

Clac needs a conquer.json in your project root to work. A minimal configuration could look like this:

{
  "mode": "socket",
  "path": "./conquer.sock"
}

which tells clac to run in socket mode, with the socket lying in your project root. mode can be either socket or network, with socket being the default. However, named pipes for windows are on the to-do and until then you might need to run it via network connection under windows. If mode is socket, you need to provide the additional path option to specify a path where the unix socket should be created. If mode is network you also need to provide the port option to specify the port to use.

Setup

The module exports 2 functions: register and start.

register takes a name, additional arguments and the callback to execute.

var conquer = require('clac');
conquer.register('foo', [
  {
    name: '--bar',
    options: {
      help: 'foobarbaz'
    }
  }
], function (args, out, end) {

});

The first argument is the name of the command which you cann call it later with. The second argument is the arguments definition for the command. It takes an array of objects, each needing a name and a options field. Those will be passed to argparse's addArgument function, so for documentation on that you best look there.

The third parameter is the function to execute when the command is called. It get's the args parameter, as parsed by argparse, a function out which you can use to print text back to your call (a simple console.log would make the server print stuff, which would be awkard if it's running behind systemd or something the like) and an end function you should call when you are finished. Calling end will terminate the connection to the client.

start will make clac listen on the medium specified by the config. Takes no args.

conquer.start();