CLI Apps and NodeJS, Made for each other?

03 Jun 2015 Tweet programming

After starting to follow @sindresorhus and @kevva, the one thing that started filling my GitHub timeline, were repositories like [is-online], [wifi-password], [is-video], etc. These were NodeJS repositories that did something really simple, like checking if the computer was online, confirming if the file that the path points to is a video or not.

The one other thing that was interesting was that these ran from a NodeJS script as well as the CLI. It seemded like one of the easiest method to package a CLI application. And thus, started a journey across @sindresorhus and @kevva’s code. Finding the place where this code exactly was took more time than I thought. Checking through the package.json file, I found the slightly suspicious bin declartion, in the pkg object.

Slight googling about this led me to the package.json manifest, it explained a lot of other options there, which I was not using, such as the repository, author and it’s subfields. I filled in all these fields in the package.json, and published to NPM again.

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel the need to talk about that, because it was simple, like really really simple. It was almost as easy as git push.

Edit the package.json file, and push the package to NPM. The package is now hosted on NPM. The package itself is a Rubik’s Cube timer, on the Command Line thing. Time all your solves right from the command line. It has a surprising amount of downloads, If I say so myself!

The one other thing that I have always wanted from a Rubik’s Cube timer, is that it store my times forever, without any unreliability. And I believe that this module, when completed, will be able to do just that!

The module is open source, and is licensed under MIT.