Menu Commander

Gem Version Build Status Maintainability


Easily create menus for any command line tool using simple YAML configuration.



Installation

$ gem install menu_commander

Usage

Menu Commander adds the menu command line tool to your path. When running it without arguments, it will look for a menu.yml file in the current directory, and will provide you with a menu to execute any shell command.

A basic menu configuration file looks like this:

# menu.yml

# Using %{variables} in a command will prompt for an input when executed
menu:
  hello: echo hello
  hi: echo hi %{name}

# Define sub menus for any %{variable} that was defined in the command
args:
  name:
  - Harry
  - Lloyd

Then, start the menu by running:

# Start the menu with ./menu.yml
$ menu

# Start the menu with ./some-other-file.yml
$ menu some-other-file

Demo

  • When a menu or sub menu has more than 10 items, it will become paginated and a search filter will be added.
  • Pressing Home from any nested menu will go back to the first menu.
  • Pressing Page Up from any nested menu will go back to the previous menu.

All features have an example configuration in the examples folder. To run an example, simply execute menu EAXMPLE_NAME form within the examples folder, where EXAMPLE_NAME is the name of the YAML file without the extension.

Minimal menu requirements

The only requirement for a minimal menu is to have a menu definition with key: command to run.

menu:
  hello: echo hello
  whoami: whoami

See: examples/minimal.yml

Argument sub-menus

Using %{variables} in a command will prompt for an input when executed. The sub-menu for that input is specified in the args definition.

menu:
  server: rails server --env %{environment}
  test: RAILS_ENV=%{environment} rspec

args:
  environment:
    - staging
    - production

See: examples/args-array.yml

In case the argument array contains only one array element for a given variable, it will be automatically used without prompting the user.

This is useful when you need to define variables that repeat multiple times in your menu.

args:
  server: [localhost]

See: examples/args-static.yml

Using key: value pairs in the args menu will create a sub-menu with labels that are different from their substituted value:

menu: 
  server: rails server --env %{environment}
  test: RAILS_ENV=%{environment} rspec

args:
  environment:
    Staging Environment: staging
    Production Environment: production

See: examples/args-hash.yml

In order to obtain the sub-menu items from a shell command, simply provide the command to run, instead of providing the menu options. The command is expected to provide newline-delimited output.

menu:
  show: cat %{file}
  edit: vi %{file}

args:
  file: ls 

See: examples/args-shell.yml

Free text input

When using a %{variable} that does not have a corresponding definition in the args section, you will simply be prompted for a free text input:

menu:
  release: 
    echo %{version} > version.txt &&
    git tag v%{version}

See: examples/args-free-text.yml

Nested menus

You can nest as many menu levels as you wish under the menu definition.

menu:
  docker:
    images: docker images ls
    containers: docker ps -a
    stack:
      deploy: docker stack deploy -c docker-compose.yml mystack
      list: docker stack ls

  git:
    status: git status
    branch: git branch

See: examples/args-nested.yml

Header text

Use the header option to display a sentence or a multi-line paragraph when the menu is started. The header string supports colsole color markers:

header: |-
  Welcome to this !txtgrn!basic menu
  !bldred!Multiline!txtrst! headers are allowed

See: examples/header.yml

Split menu into several files

Each menu configuration file can include any number of additional YAML files inside it. This is useful when:

  • Your menu configuration file becomes too long, and you wish to split it to separate logical units.
  • You have multiple menu files, and you want to include common configuration in each of them.

This is done by using the extends option:

# examples/extend.yml
extends: extend-parent.yml

menu:
  hello: echo hello
  hi: echo hi %{name}

args:
  name: [Harry, Lloyd]
  server: [example.com]

See: examples/extend.yml

The below configuration will be merged into the above menu:

# examples/extend-parent.yml
menu:
  ping: ping %{server}

args:
  server: [localhost, google.com]

See: examples/extend-parent.yml

Multi-line commands

Providing an array to a menu, will join the array with '&&' to a single command. Alternatively, you can use a simple YAML multi-line string.

menu:
  deploy:
    - run tests
    - git commit -am "automatic commit"
    - git push

  alternative: >
    run tests &&
    git commit -am "automatic commit" &&
    git push

See: examples/multiline.yml

By default, menu files are looked for in the current working directory.

You may instruct Menu Commander to look in additional locations by setting the MENU_PATH environment variable to one or more paths. Note that when using this method, Menu Commander will not look in the current directory, unless you include it in MENU_PATH, like this:

$ export MENU_PATH=.:$HOME/menus:/etc/menus

If you wish this setting to be permanent, add it to your .bashrc or your preferred initialization script.