ByteDev.Cmd 4.1.1

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.

Release Notes

Releases follow semantic versioning.

Full details of the release notes can be viewed on GitHub.

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, MessageBox, Table.
• 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 allowedArgs = new List<CmdAllowedArg>
{
    new CmdAllowedArg('o', false) {LongName = "output", Description = "Output something"},
    new CmdAllowedArg('p', true) {LongName = "path", Description = "Set a path"}
};

var cmdArgInfo = new CmdArgInfo(args, allowedArgs);

When creating an instance of CmdArgInfo if 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(allowedArgs.HelpText());
}

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