Add ability to specify a default subcommand about args HOT 7 CLOSED

@jcurtis args.sub returns an array of all subcommands from process.argv. e.g.

const args = require('args');

args.command('import', 'Import Command')

console.log(args.sub)

args.parse(process.argv)

if (!args.sub[0]) args.showHelp() // calling the script without a subcommand will show help

$ node script.js
[]
$ node script.js import
['import']

Does that help?

from args.

The default command should be the code contained within the main binary. If you need an alias for that, simply define a new command and make it load the main binary.

You can define it in the init function here.

from args.

Was just thinking about this for my little CLI tool.

Right now if you just initiate the program with no command, nothing happens...

$ cli

$

You have to explicitly type cli help to show the usage. I'll try adding this with my own spin on it and see what happens.

from args.

@jcurtis You should try this... 😊

from args.

@leo Yep using .showHelp(). The problem is that the execution doesn't stop after a command has been run and there's no readily apparent way to know if a command was successfully found without having to check the process.argv input manually.

I was thinking since we're already holding the list of valid commands within the args instance maybe it would make sense to check for a valid command there.

Maybe a better approach would be to expose something like args.validSubCommand() so users can more easily check it themselves?

.isDefined is kinda relevant but you'd still need internals to call it.

Here's a third idea: instead of only returning flags on args.parse(process.argv) we could return an object with a bit more information in it. This would obviously be a breaking changes though.

const {command, flags} = args.parse(process.argv);

from args.

It does for showing the help screen. Thanks 👍

What about the default command scenario? Same logic except you'd want to call import for example?

from args.

After .parse(), the execution WILL stop. So if you're defining the sub commands on top of your main binary (that's where they should be defined), args will run the command if found and if it doesn't find one with the name entered, it will go on with running the main binary. In turn, you only need to call .showHelp there after you've defined the commands and the help will show up if the user tried to run a sub command that doesn't exist.

from args.