CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptnode.jscommand-line-interface
user9804767
user9804767

Reputation:

How to structure a node cli application

I want to write a node cli application and im wondering how i should structure the application. Im fairly new to node and im a confused with all the design patterns used when building such a application. I want to be able to call the application from the command line, but also use it as a node module for better testing.

Currently i have one file with lots of functions that get called directly from the cli, but i feel this is rather difficult to maintain.

Is there any good writing on how to do such things? i looked at rimraf but it confused me even more. Thanks for your time

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2649

Answers (2)

Terry Lennox
Terry Lennox

Reputation: 30685

There's no one "standard" way to structure Node.js apps, however you will notice that many authors follow similar patterns. Instead of having one file containing all code, it should be split out into modules, grouped by function. Have a look at this repo on Github, it has some very good suggestions about Node.js best practice https://github.com/i0natan/nodebestpractices#1-project-structure-practices.

A couple more pointers I would add: Ensure you're logging any errors, consider using something like Winston.js for this purpose. Also have some mechanism in place to restart the service if a critical error occurs, e.g. Forever.js.

Ensure likewise you're unit testing, there are some good test frameworks, Jasmine, Mocha, Cucumber.js.

Upvotes: 1

A. Llorente
A. Llorente

Reputation: 1162

I don't know if there is a "right" way to do it but I can tell you how I have dealt with a problem similar to yours. I wanted to create a CLI and a visual studio code plugin so people would be able to use the functionality both from VSC and from the CLI (for those that don't use VSC), so the approach I took was to put all the logic in its own package and then create two other packages that included the first one, one for CLI and one VSC plugin that required the "logic" package.

In the CLI package you would only have code strictly related to command handling and then the real meat happens in the logic package. In my case the VSC plugin package had very few lines of code, just configuration and the calls to the needed functions.

Then regarding the structure of the code some recommendations:

  • expose only what is strictly necessary
  • isolate your code in different files/classes based on common functionality (and go to point 1)
  • test your code
  • lint your code

But those are common sense and language independent recommendations.

Upvotes: 3

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