lud/cli_mate

Another command line parser for Elixir

CliMate

This package implements a simple wrapper around OptionParser that allows to define options, documentation and arguments in one data structure.

It also provides classic printing of "usage" for a command.

This package is targeted at standalone mix commands, i.e. commands defined in packages installed globally (for instance mix archive.install hex some_package). Those packages do not contain their dependencies, and for that reason, all code defined in CliMate is injected in the consumer code.

For this reason, CliMate only defines a small set of features.

Installation & Use

def deps do
  [
    {:cli_mate, "~> 0.5", runtime: false},
  ]
end

All available functions of this library are defined in CliMate.CLI.

If you want to use CLI Mate in a mix task that you will distribute as a standalone command, you must define a wrapper module:

defmodule App.CLI do
  use CliMate
end

This module will export the exact same functionality as CliMate.CLI.

Make sure to provide runtime: false in your dependency declaration for :cli_mate.

Providing usage block in mix help my.command

The default usage block rendered when calling mix my.command --help is not included by default when calling mix help my.command.

If you want, you can include it manually by adding it to the @moduledoc attribute:

# Use the CLI module that you defined if you need to.

alias App.CLI

# Define the command once, so you can use it in module docs and in the `run/1`
# callback.

@command [
  module: __MODULE__,
  options: [
    some_option: [
      type: :boolean,
      short: :s,
      doc: "Does something, for sure."
    ]
  ]
]

# Generate the usage block and include it to @moduledoc, with the appropriate
# format.

@moduledoc """
This command does things!

#{CLI.format_usage(@command, format: :moduledoc)}
"""

# Since we defined the options in a @command attribute, we can now reuse it in
# the code.

@impl Mix.Task
def run(argv) do
  %{options: options,arguments: arguments} = CLI.parse_or_halt!(argv, @command)
  # ...
end