Yargs parser is an incredibly basic option parser for the command line.

This is a basic library I tend to use a lot for any of my CLI tools that I am building out.

# NPM
npm install yargs-parser --save

# or yarn
yarn add yargs-parser
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The main use case we will use is for options and arguments passed from the command line.

First, create an index.js file and require the following:

var argv = require("yargs-parser")(process.argv.slice(2));
console.log(argv);
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Now we can already run the script from the command line, pass options and arguments and see what happens:

node index.js hello --foo=33 --bar world
# prints { _: ['hello'], foo: 33, bar: 'world' }
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If we disect the above command, we note that anything passed after node index.js becomes an accessible argument from our argv object under argv._. All the other options passed as the object key as a property of argv with the corresponding value passed.

Taking all this into account, the above is now accesible as follows:

var argv = require("yargs-parser")(process.argv.slice(2));
console.log(argv._[0]); // hello
console.log(argv.foo); // 33
console.log(argv.bar); // world
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Great! Now we can start building our Node.js commandline tools.

For now, let's just set up a basic example of how you could run a command line tool that just logs out some basic information based on the first argument passed and options.

var argv = require("yargs-parser")(process.argv.slice(2));

const help = `
    Usage
    $ node index.js <action> <option>

    Action
    ---
    hello [name]    Echoes hello. Defaults to "world".
    friends         Echoes what they are

    Examples
    $ node index.js hello
    $ node index.js hello --name clark
    $ node index.js friends
`;

const hello = () => {
  const name = argv.name ? argv.name : "clark";
  console.log(`hello ${name}`);
};

const friends = () => console.log("are like flowers");

/**
 * Run a function based on the argument provided.
 *
 */
const main = async () => {
  try {
    switch (argv._[0]) {
      case "hello":
        hello();
        break;
      case "friends":
        friends();
        break;
      default:
        console.log(help);
        break;
    }
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err);
  }
};

// Run the program
main();
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Now we can run our tool above!

node index.js hello
# prints hello clark
node index.js hello --name tim
# prints hello tim
node index.js hello --name=bob
# prints hello bob
node index.js friends
# prints are like flowers
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Get creative and start building some useful Node.js CLI tools for your workflow.

Code can be found on my Github.

Hello is a series that is about short, sharp examples. Read more on this series to find small gems to add your toolset.