Inside the Gluegun Toolbox

Let's explore the inside of the famous Gluegun "Toolbox" (or "Context" as it's sometimes called).

module.exports = {
  name: 'dostuff',
  alias: 'd',
  run: async function (toolbox) {
    // great! now what?
  },
}

Here's what's available inside the toolbox object you see all over Gluegun.

name	provides the...	3rd party
meta	information about the currently running CLI
config	configuration options from the app or plugin
filesystem	ability to copy, move & delete files & directories	fs-jetpack
http	ability to talk to the web	apisauce
parameters	command line arguments and options	yargs-parser
patching	manipulating file contents easily	fs-jetpack
print	tools to print output to the command line	colors, ora
prompt	tools to acquire extra command line user input	enquirer
semver	utilities for working with semantic versioning	semver
strings	some string helpers like case conversion, etc.	lodash
system	ability to execute	node-which, execa, cross-spawn
template	code generation from templates	ejs
packageManager	ability to add or remove packages with Yarn/NPM

The toolbox has "drawers" full of useful tools for building CLIs. For example, the toolbox.meta.version function can be invoked like this:

module.exports = {
  name: 'dostuff',
  alias: 'd',
  run: async function (toolbox) {
    // use them like this...
    toolbox.print.info(toolbox.meta.version())

    // or destructure!
    const {
      print: { info },
      meta: { version },
    } = toolbox
    info(version())
  },
}

To learn more about each tool, explore the rest of the toolbox-*.md files in this folder.

Accessing Tools Directly

You can access almost all of Gluegun's toolbox tools without running a command. This is useful when you'd like to use these tools outside of a CLI context or when doing some really specialized CLI.

const { print, filesystem, strings } = require('gluegun')
// or
const { print } = require('gluegun/print')
const { filesystem } = require('gluegun/filesystem')
const { strings } = require('gluegun/strings')
const { packageManager } = require('gluegun/package-manager')

print.info(`Hey, I'm Gluegun!`)
filesystem.dir('/tmp/jamon')
print.error(strings.isBlank(''))

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