kubo

Kubo

Lightweight package to write command line apps in Go.

Aims

To be (and remain) as lightweight as possible, while still providing sufficient features to build rich command line applications. Also to be easy to understand and use.

Installation

Use vgo get to download the package.

$ vgo get github.com/ravernkoh/kubo

Usage

Basic

The most basic app has just one command, with no arguments and no flags.

app := kubo.NewApp(&kubo.Command{
    Name: "basic",
    Description: "a basic hello world app",
    Run: func(ctx *kubo.Context) error {
        // Prints 'hello, world!'
        fmt.Fprintln(ctx.Stdout(), "hello, world!")
    },
})

Run then runs the app and returns an error which should be handled (usually by simply printing it out).

// Blocks until the command is completed
if err := app.Run(); err != nil {
    fmt.Printf("error: %v\n", err)
}

In this case, the app simply prints "hello, world!" (more will be explained on the context later).

$ basic
hello, world!

Commands

The building block of a command line app is a command. Flags, arguments and child commands can all be defined on a command.

kubo.Command{
    Name: "commands",
    Description: "a random command",
    Run: func(ctx *kubo.Context) error {
        // Prints 'random'
        fmt.Fprintln(ctx.Stdout(), "random")
    },
}

The Run function is the function that will be called if the raw arguments are successfully parsed by the app. Usually, code will be written in this function.

Flags

Defining flags on a command is easy.

kubo.Command{
    Name: "flags",
    Description: "a command with flags",
    // Defines the flags for this command
    Flags: []kubo.Flag{
        {
            Name: "one",
            Description: "the first flag",
        },
        {
            Name: "two",
            Description: "the second flag",
        },
    },
}

The code above defines two flags, called one and two, which will be available for use with the command.

$ flags --one value1 --two value2

Flags can have aliases, which defines alternate names for them.

kubo.Flag{
    Name: "one",
    Description: "the first flag",
    Aliases: []string{"o"},
}

For single letter flags, only a single dash needs to be used.

$ flags -o value1 --two value2

Flags also have a field called Bool. If this is set to true, then no value needs to be passed to them.

kubo.Flag{
    Name: "two",
    Description: "the second flag",
    Bool: true,
}

The resulting value would be "true" if the flag is set and "false" if the flag is not set.

Note that once Bool is set, no value should be passed to the flag, as the parser will not try to parse for the flag value.

$ flags -o value1 --two

Arguments

Defining arguments on a command is also easy.

kubo.Command{
    Name: "arguments",
    Description: "a command with arguments",
    // Defines the arguments for this command
    Arguments: []kubo.Argument{
        {
            Name: "one",
        },
        {
            Name: "two",
        },
    },
}

The code above defines two arguments, one and two. The order in which you define the arguments matters. This is because arguments are parsed by their positions and not by their names.

$ arguments value1 value2

This will result in one having the value "value1" and two having the value "value2".

Arguments can also have a field of Multiple, which causes the argument to collect multiple values.

kubo.Argument{
    Name: "two",
    Multiple: true,
}

Note that only the last argument can have Multiple set.

$ arguments value1 value2 value3 value4

This will result in two having the value ["value2", "value3", "value4"].

Contexts

The context passed in the run function is used to get the arguments and flags that were parsed from the raw arguments.

kubo.Command{
    Name: "contexts",
    Description: "a command with arguments and flags",
    Arguments: []kubo.Argument{
        {Name: "argument"},
    },
    Flags: []kubo.Flag{
        {Name: "flag"},
    },
    Run: func(ctx *kubo.Context) error {
        // Gets the argument called 'argument'
        argument, err := ctx.Argument("argument")
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }

        // Gets the flag called 'flag'
        flag, err := ctx.Flag("flag")
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }

        fmt.Fprintf(ctx.Stdout(), "argument: %s, flag: %s\n", argument, flag)
    },
}

The context also contains the methods for Stdin and Stdout, which should be used to read from and write to the console. They can be configured in the app itself (which will pass these values to the context).

// Default values
app.Stdin = os.Stdin
app.Stdout = os.Stdout

When getting arguments and flags from the context, sometimes their values need to be converted to other types. For that purpose, the kuboutil package can be used.

// Gets the argument called 'argument' and converts it to an int
argument, err := kuboutil.Int(ctx.Argument("argument"))
if err != nil {
    return err
}

These conversion utilities automatically propogate the error from the Argument method.

Child commands

Commands can have child commands.

parent := &kubo.Command{
    Name: "parent",
}

child := &kubo.Command{
    Name: "child",
}

// Makes 'child' a child of the 'parent' command
parent.Add(child)

These child commands can be called by passing in their name.

$ parent child

Child commands can have flags, arguments, and even child commands of their own!

parent := &kubo.Command{
    Name: "parent",
}

child := &kubo.Command{
    Name: "child",
}

grandchild := &kubo.Command{
    Name: "grandchild",
}

// Makes 'grandchild' a child of the 'child' command
child.Add(grandchild)

// Makes 'child' a child of the 'parent' command
parent.Add(child)

They can then be called by passing in their names.

$ parent child grandchild

Help command

A help command can be generated for each command.

complex := &kubo.Command{
    Name: "complex",
    Description: "some complex command",
}

// Makes 'help' a child command of the 'complex' command
complex.Add(complex.Help())

The help command can be called using help.

$ complex help

Examples

More examples can be found in the _examples folder.

Alternatives

Of course, there are other more notable packages for building command line apps (Forgive me if I missed yours out).

• github.com/spf13/cobra
• github.com/urfave/cli

Kubo was built as some practice for me and also to contribute to open source software!

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Public License 3.0.

Author

• Ravern Koh (ravernkoh@gmail.com)