Creating Commands

The doc-kit CLI is built on Commander. Each command is a module in packages/cli/bin/commands/ whose default export is a Commander Command instance; the CLI entry point registers every command exported from packages/cli/bin/commands/index.mjs.

Today the CLI ships a single command, generate.

Creating a New Command

Step 1: Create the Command File

Create a new file in packages/cli/bin/commands/ with your command name:

import { Command, Option } from 'commander';

import { errorWrap } from '../utils.mjs';

export default new Command('my-command')
  .description('Does something useful')
  .addOption(new Option('-f, --force', 'Force overwrite existing files'))
  .action(
    errorWrap(async opts => {
      // Your command logic here
    })
  );

JavaScript

errorWrap catches both synchronous and asynchronous errors, logs them, and exits with a non-zero status — wrap every action with it so failures are reported consistently.

Step 2: Register the Command

Add your command to the exports in packages/cli/bin/commands/index.mjs:

import generate from './generate.mjs';
import myCommand from './my-command.mjs'; // Add this

export default [
  generate,
  myCommand, // Add this
];

JavaScript

The CLI in packages/cli/bin/cli.mjs registers every command in that array, so no further changes are needed.

Command Options

Options use Commander's Option class directly; see the Commander documentation for the full API.

.addOption(new Option('-i, --input <patterns...>', 'Input file patterns (glob)'))
.addOption(new Option('-o, --output <directory>', 'The output directory'))
.addOption(
  new Option('--log-level <level>', 'Log level').choices(['debug', 'info'])
)

JavaScript

Flag Syntax

<value> - Required argument
[value] - Optional argument
<values...> - Variadic (multiple values)
[values...] - Optional variadic

One global option, --log-level, is defined on the program itself in packages/cli/bin/cli.mjs and applies to every command.