# Bashly - Bash CLI Framework and Generator Create beautiful bash scripts from simple YAML configuration [![Gem Version](https://badge.fury.io/rb/bashly.svg)](https://badge.fury.io/rb/bashly) [![Build Status](https://github.com/DannyBen/bashly/workflows/Test/badge.svg)](https://github.com/DannyBen/bashly/actions?query=workflow%3ATest) [![Maintainability](https://api.codeclimate.com/v1/badges/8cf89047e50ca601e431/maintainability)](https://codeclimate.com/github/DannyBen/bashly/maintainability) --- ![demo](demo/cast.svg)

Table of Contents

Installation

$ gem install bashly

or with Docker:

$ alias bashly='docker run --rm -it --volume "$PWD:/app" dannyben/bashly'

Prerequisites

The bash scripts generated by bashly require bash 4 or higher due to heavy use of associative arrays.

What is Bashly

Bashly is a command line application (written in Ruby) that lets you generate feature-rich bash command line tools.

The design intention is to let you focus on your specific code, without worrying about command line argument parsing, usage texts, error messages and other functions that are usually handled by a framework in any other programming language.

Bahsly is responsible for:

  • Generating a single, standalone bash script.
  • Generating usage texts and help screens, showing your tool's arguments, flags and commands (works for subcommands also).
  • Parsing the user's command line and extracting:
    • Optional or required positional arguments.
    • Optional or required option flags (with or without flag arguments).
    • Commands (and subcommands).
    • Standard flags (like --help and --version).
  • Providing you with a place to input your code for each of the functions your tool performs, and merging it back to the final script.
  • Providing you with additional (optional) framework-style, standard library functions:
    • Color output.
    • Config file management (INI format).
    • YAML parsing.
    • and more.

Usage

In an empty directory, create a sample configuration file by running

$ bashly init
# or, to generate a simpler configuration:
$ bashly init --minimal

This will create a sample src/bashly.yml file. You can edit this file to specify which arguments, flags and commands you need in your bash script.

Then, generate an initial bash script and function placeholder scripts by running

$ bashly generate

This will:

  1. Create the bash executable script.
  2. Create files for you to edit in the src folder.

Finally, edit the files in the src folder. Each of your script's commands get their own file. Once you edit, run bashly generate again to merge the content from your functions back into the script.

Using the input arguemnts in your code

In order to access the parsed arguments in any of your partial scripts, you may simply access the $args associative array.

For example:

  1. Generate a minimal configuration with bashly init --minimal
  2. Generate the bash script with bashly generate
  3. Run the script with ./download hello --force

You will notice that all the arguments of the associative array are printed on screen. This is done by the inspect_args function that was inserted into the generated partial script src/root_command.sh.

You can now access these variables by modifying sec/root_command.sh like this:

# src/root_command.sh
source_url=${args[source]}
force=${args[--force]}

if [[ $force ]]; then
  echo "downloading $source_url with --force"
else
  echo "downloading $source_url"
fi

After editing the file, run bashly generate (or bashly g for short) and run:

$ ./download a --force
downloading a with --force

Examples

The bashly.yml file can be set up to generate two types of scripts:

  1. Script with commands (for example, like docker or git).
  2. Script without commands (for example, like ls)

This is detected automatically by the contents of the configuration: If it contains a commands definition, it will generate a script with commands.

Sample configuraiton for a script without commands

Sample configuraiton for a script with commands

See the examples folder for more examples.

Configuration Reference

The bashly.yml configuration file consists of these types:

  • Command - defines the root command as well as any subcommand.
  • Argument - defines positional arguments.
  • Flag - defines option flags.
  • Environment Variable - defines environment variables required (or desired) by your script.

Command options

Unless otherwise specified, these definitiona can be used for both the root command and subcommands (under the commands definition).

Option Description
name The name of the script or subcommand.
short An additional, optional pattern - usually used to denote a one letter variation of the command name. You can add * as a suffix, to denote a "starts with" pattern - for example short: m*. Applicable only in subcommands.
help The header text to display when using --help. This option can have multiple lines. In this case, the first line will be used as summary wherever appropriate.
version The string to display when using --version. Applicable only in the main command.
default Setting this to yes on any command, will make unrecognized command line arguments to be passed to this command. Applicable only in subcommands.
examples Specify an array of examples to show when using --help. Each example can have multiple lines.
environment_variables Specify an array of environment variables needed by your script.
commands Specify the array of commands. Each command will have its own args and flags. Note: if commands is provided, you cannot specify flags or args at the same level.
args Specify the array of positional arguments this script needs.
flags Specify the array of option flags this script needs.
dependencies Specify an array of any required external dependencies (commands). The script execution will be halted with a friendly error unless all dependency commands exist.
group In case you have many commands, use this option to specify a caption to display before this command. This option is purely for display purposes, and needs to be specified only for the first command in each group.

Argument options

The argument's value will be available to you as ${args[user]} in your bash function.

Option Description
name The name of the argument.
help The message to display when using --help. Can have multiple lines.
required Specify if this argument is required. Note that once you define an optional argument (without required: true) then you cannot define required arguments after it.
default The value to use in case it is not provided by the user. Implies that this argument is optional.

Flag options

The flag's value will be available to you as ${args[--output]} in your bash function (regardless of whether the user provided it with the long or short form).

Option Description
long The long form of the flag.
short The short form of the flag.
help The text to display when using --help. Can have multiple lines.
arg If the flag requires an argument, specify its name here.
required Specify if this flag is required.
default The value to use in case it is not provided by the user. Implies that this flag is optional, and only makes sense when the flag has an argument.

Special handling for -v and -h

The -v and -h flags will be used as the short options for --version and --help respectively only if you are not using them in any of your own flags.

Environment Variable options

The below configuration generates this environment variable usage text:

If an environment variable is defined as required (false by default), the execution of the script will be halted with a friendly error if it is not set.

Option Description
name The name of the variable (it will be automatically capitalized).
help The message to display when using --help. Can have multiple lines.
required Specify if this variable is required.

Real World Examples

  • Rush - a Personal Package Manager
  • Alf - a generator for bash aliases and sub-aliases
  • git-changelog - a change log generator

Contributing / Support

If you experience any issue, have a question or a suggestion, or if you wish to contribute, feel free to open an issue.