SimpleCLI

A super comfortable CLI demo to showcase how to create CLI programs in AutoHotkey.

Do I need anything to run this?

An AutoHotkey installation of 1.1.33.10+. Nothing much else.

How to I run this demo?

Run main.ahk with AutoHotkey (recommended unicode) and you should be good to go.

How do I make my own?

There's a two ways (I can think of) to do so:

Create a new script file and include console.ahk in it and look over the examples I've given in lib/examples.ahk.
Take my code and strip everything down you don't like... You monster.

Does this have any practical use over a GUI?

Hell no! A GUI is much more powerful and allows for much more control over user input. This whole demo is purely to show the use of a console as your interface as merely to be fancy and look cool to all your friends :)

What's `oop.ahk`?

That is my way of doing Object Oriented Programming in AHK. It's a little.. tempermental and requires the include to be last or something close to last, read more about why in that file.

What can this console class do?

First you have to initalize it:

con := new CMD()

Then you can do so many things:

Print to it (of course).

con.writeln("Hello world!")
con.write("I am the start of a line... ")
con.writeln("And I'm at the end of the same line!")

Get user input (prompt for answer).

con.write("Enter your name:  ")
username := con.input()
con.writeln("Hello, {1}!", username)

Change text color and background and print to the console.

con.fgcolor := con.Color.FG_CYAN
con.bgcolor := con.Color.BG_RED
con.writeln("This is probably really hard to see. Sorry!")
con.writeln("Let's clean this up...")
con.set_color()  ; Reset console colors back to default (grey text, black background).

What can the console class not do?

It does not have built-in user interfaces like a progress bar, selection list, or statusbar. Those you have to make yourself. I've provided the progress bar as an example for you already.

Note...

Testing is needed on other versions of windows and bit sizes of AHK.
Method names are due to change and cleanup, so keep an eye on the changelog for anything different!
Documentation for lib/console.ahk is to be done, I'm just pushing this demo to github before I lose it to something dumb.

What I want to add next:

A new write method that allows for changing the color without passing a map as a parameter.
Clean up method names.
Add new properties.

DelPyth/SimpleCLI