github.com/dpweb/cli-node
How to write a command line application in Node.js
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Re: How to write a command line application in Node.js
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're doing crazy heavy processing or something, it's not the right tool. But you wouldn't do that in JS. You'd shell out or call something native. Node is best used managing parallel streams of stuff. Perhaps surprisingly, a command line application is a great example of that. I would much rather build a nontrivial command line app in node than in anything else. Try it, you'll see.
There are tons of better options to choose from. If you're not making a web UI, literally any choice is better than Javascript, unless that is the only language you know.
Compared to most languages you'd use for a commandline application, node has a simple, usable async I/O interface, and the libraries you can get for it actually assume async.
If you need that, there are only a handful of choices and node is one of them.
Re: How to write a command line application in Node.js
#13Something similar but published just last week: http://flippinawesome.org/2013/07/29/writing-a-command-line-...
Re: How to write a command line application in Node.js
#14Is there a reason to build a command line application in Node.js? It doesn't really seem like Node is the right tool for the job...
Depends on the job. I'm writing a command line app in Node right now to automate a couple thousand SQL queries for a db I'm working with. Node wasn't my first choice, but I looked at how to connect both Ruby and Python to MySQL and it seemed like more trouble than it was worth for a one-time use utility. Node was just 'npm install mysql'. Might not be the best way, but I only need to use it once.
Re: How to write a command line application in Node.js
#15Is there a reason to build a command line application in Node.js? It doesn't really seem like Node is the right tool for the job...
Yes. If a person already knows JavaScript well, then it will be easier for them to write a CLI app/utility/script in JS than it would be to write a shell script. Another reason to write in JS would be to gain code reuse. If the person has a web app that uses node, then they can share code between the web and CLI applications.
> Another reason to write in JS would be to gain code reuse.
> If the person has a web app that uses node, then they can
> share code between the web and CLI applications.
Re: How to write a command line application in Node.js
#16Bunch of broken URLs due to closing parentheses
Re: How to write a command line application in Node.js
#17Is there a reason to build a command line application in Node.js? It doesn't really seem like Node is the right tool for the job...
Depends on the job. I'm writing a command line app in Node right now to automate a couple thousand SQL queries for a db I'm working with. Node wasn't my first choice, but I looked at how to connect both Ruby and Python to MySQL and it seemed like more trouble than it was worth for a one-time use utility. Node was just 'npm install mysql'. Might not be the best way, but I only need to use it once.
Isn't Ruby just 'gem install mysql'?
Re: How to write a command line application in Node.js
#18The number one reason to write CLI apps in node is npm. npm gets package management right, preferring local dependencies to global ones - this means no worrying about what version of a library a user has in their global environment. You also get to bring node's parallel io-centric patterns to your scripting. Need to download a bunch of files from a remote host, process them, and write them to disk? Go for it. But tak…
I thought a lot of people discourage the use of static linking or any form of local dependency bundling, because when there's a security update every app needs to be updated individually. But it seems that with the emergence of Bundler and NPM, people are trending more and more towards local bundling. What happened?
Re: How to write a command line application in Node.js
#19The number one reason to write CLI apps in node is npm. npm gets package management right, preferring local dependencies to global ones - this means no worrying about what version of a library a user has in their global environment. You also get to bring node's parallel io-centric patterns to your scripting. Need to download a bunch of files from a remote host, process them, and write them to disk? Go for it. But tak…
I thought a lot of people discourage the use of static linking or any form of local dependency bundling, because when there's a security update every app needs to be updated individually. But it seems that with the emergence of Bundler and NPM, people are trending more and more towards local bundling. What happened?
One possible contrarian view: global dependencies actually cause a lot of those security updates to be necessary. Exploits that target a given version of a given library may be easier to propagate if you know that almost every application run by every user depends on that library version.
Re: How to write a command line application in Node.js
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the job. I'm writing a command line app in Node right now to automate a couple thousand SQL queries for a db I'm working with. Node wasn't my first choice, but I looked at how to connect both Ruby and Python to MySQL and it seemed like more trouble than it was worth for a one-time use utility. Node was just 'npm install mysql'. Might not be the best way, but I only need to use it once.
Isn't Ruby just 'gem install mysql'?
I don't recall the instructions I looked at, but I know what I read was much more than a gem install. Correct me if I'm wrong, I actually wanted to use Ruby first.