A minimalist framework for beautiful CLI applications written in Go.

go get github.com/jordanbrauer/console

1. Clone (or fork) the repository
2. Checkout a new branch from trunk
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!

Happy hacking!

Commands are defined as variables using a struct that's properties are act as a form of configuration. At a minimum, your command should have a Name and Run property defined.

var greet = &console.Command{
    Name: "greet",
    Description: "fubar snafu",
    Run: func(fubar *Command) ExitCode {
        println("hello, world!")

        return 0
    }}

var noop = &console.Command{
    Name: "noop",
    Description: "nada, zip, ziltch, nothing",
    Run: func() ExitCode {
        return 0
    }}

Commands are recursive. That is to say that they can have commands of their own. To do this, simply populate the Commands property with one or more Command pointers, instead of defining a Run function.

var parent = &console.Command{
    Name: "foo",
    Description: "i am the parent",
    Commands: []*Command{child},
}

var child = &console.Command{
    Name: "bar",
    Description: "i am the child",
    Run: func() ExitCode {
        return 0
    }}

which would be used like so

go run main.go foo bar

Once you have some commands, you can create a new CLI app, give it a version, and register one or more commands to be executed by the user.

cli := console.New("your version")

cli.Register(noop, greet)

cli.Splash(func () string {
    // logo, author(s), version, licensing, whatever you want...
})

The easiest part is running the app. It's a good idea to pass the execution result to os.Exit so that the user's operating system can see the exit code returned by the executed command.

os.Exit(cli.Run())