CliKit

A header-only collection of useful and useless things to support C++ CLI design

*outdated gif, but it gives an idea!

Why

I don't really like getopt, I wanted the cleanest argument parser possible, so I wrote a first version of ProcessOptions and then a few other things. I gathered these together here, and then CliKit was born!

What's in it?

This is not "low-level zero overhead black-magic" code. The mindset here is to promote readability and flexibility. So far, the elements contained in the kit are :

Option processor, to crunch your argc and argv buddies and give the help messages
Command shell, to input runtime commands
A spinner, with customizable sprites
A loading bar, in which you can put a spinner!

Option processor

A tool to launch your project quickly and make your life simpler.

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  clikit::usage.setIntro("myprogram [args...] [-a [args...]] [-b|--bye [args...]]");
  
  clikit::ProcessOptions(argc, argv) 
  ({
    BADOPTIONS ( { clikit::usage(); }),
    FIRSTARGS  ( { crunch_pre_option(args); }),
    OPTION     ("-a",       "a great option!"  { flag_a = true; }),
    OPTION     ("-b,--bye", "farewell friend!" { prepare(args); })
  });

  ...

Any argument of your program starting with a - will be detected as an option and the following words as option arguments.
Anything before that will land in args in the function body provided to FIRSTARGS.
Options are defined with the OPTION macros, which should be provided a comma-separated string of options, a help/usage message and a function body.
Within that function body, args contains a string vector of option arguments.
BADOPTIONS is optional and is called if non-defined options are detected. Their names are provided in args.

Command shell

The CommandShell uses a similar pattern :

CommandShell("> ", "exit") ({
  COMMAND ("commandWord", { commandAction(args); }),
  DEFAULT ({ processLine(args); }),
  EXIT	  ({ exit(0); })
});

The (optional) constructor parameters define the shell symbol and the exit command word
Single-word commands can be provided in the COMMAND macro with a function body
Any non-defined command will be processed by the function body provided in the (optional) DEFAULT macro
In every function body, args contains a string vector of the rest of the line's words
The exit command has it's own macro for a different processing

Arrow-key detection (to bring up previous commands) is not currently supported to avoid external dependencies.

CLI animations

The following elements can be found in cliAnimations.h

Spinner

A Spinner object to load with the sprite sequence of your choice. Sprites can be strings of different length.

Spinner spin({ "-", "\\", "|", "/" });
while(1) 
{ 
  cout << '\r' << spin() << flush; 
  sleep_for(100ms); 
}

Loading bar

The LoadingBar object has a few options :

Adjustable length
Togglable percentage display
Customizable loaded/not-loaded symbols
Can have a Spinner

Sample loader :

Spinner spinner({ "|X  |","| X |","|  X|","| X |" });
LoadingBar loader('X', '-', 60, true, spinner);

while (progress < 1)
{
  cout << '\r' << loader(progress) << flush;
  progress += 0.03;
  sleep_for(100ms);
}
cout << '\r' << loader(1) << flush;

dorev/CliKit