ByteDev.Cmd 1.1.1

ByteDev.Cmd

Library providing functionality to help when writing output from a .NET Console application.

Installation

ByteDev.Cmd has been written as a .NET Standard 2.0 library, so you can consume it from a .NET Core or .NET Framework 4.6.1 (or greater) application.

ByteDev.Cmd is hosted as a package on nuget.org. To install from the Package Manager Console in Visual Studio run:

Install-Package ByteDev.Cmd

Further details can be found on the nuget page.

Code

The repo can be cloned from git bash:

git clone https://github.com/ByteDev/ByteDev.Cmd

A test console application (ByteDev.Cmd.TestApp) is provided for testing and usage examples.

Usage

Public classes provided include Output, Logger, MessageBox, Keyboard, Prompt. The library also contains a namespace for handling input console arguments.

Output class

Provides wrapper functionality around the Console class to make writing out output easier.

Methods include:

• Write: write text or MessageBox
• WriteLine: write line of text
• WriteRainbowLine: write text in some crazy rainbow colors 😉
• WriteAlignLeft: write left aligned text (padded entire line)
• WriteAlignRight: write right aligned text (padded entire line)
• WriteAlignCenter: write center aligned text (padded entire line)
• WriteAlignToSides: writes some text left aligned and some text right aligned (padded entire line)
• WriteHorizontalLine: write horizontal line
• WriteBlankLines: write n blank lines

Logger class

Given optional LogLevel, LoggerColorTheme and Output dependencies provides logger style functionality wrapped around the Console class.

Methods include:

• WriteDebug
• WriteInfo
• WriteWarning
• WriteError
• WriteCritical

Arguments namespace

Handle console arguments using a CmdArgInfo class. Define what arguments are allowed using the CmdAllowedArg class.

// args is the string array of args from Program.Main

var cmdArgInfo = new CmdArgInfo(args, new List<CmdAllowedArg>
{
    new CmdAllowedArg('o', false) {LongName = "output", Description = "Output something"},
    new CmdAllowedArg('p', true) {LongName = "path", Description = "Set a path"}
});

When creating an instance of CmdArgInfo is there was any invalid input a CmdArgException will be thrown.

Once you have an instance of CmdArgInfo you can use it to determine what operations to perform:

if (cmdArgInfo.HasArguments)
{
    foreach (var cmdArg in cmdArgInfo.Arguments)
    {
        switch (cmdArg.ShortName)
        {
            case 'o':
                DoSomeOutput();
                break;

            case 'p':
                SetPath(cmdArg.Value);
                break;
        }
    }
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine(cmdArgInfo.HelpText);
}

The ByteDev.Cmd.TestApp project has a working example of this.