Print Help, add additional help, and the commander instance

[jmcdo29]

I'm thinking about exporting an @InjectCommander() decorator for injecting the commander instance to allow devs to call this.commander.help() if necessary. And while working with Help stuff, I'm thinking about creating a few new decorators for adding help to the command as described here

Probably some decorators like

@HelperText('beforeAll' | 'before' | 'after' | 'afterAll')
printHelp() {
  return 'String that should be used for help';
}

All of these options could be used, and would be added to commander appropriately.

Might even add in ways to change the help flag, but that'll be a stretch from the current implementation. Anyone got any thoughts?

[Zyles]

Any progress on this? I don't see a way to display the help of a command when ran without options. Only the top level help can be shown. When running node dist/console

[smolinari]

@Zyles - It looks like this was added.

https://jmcdo29.github.io/nest-commander/docs/features/commander/#adding-custom-help

Scott

[mikehaertl]

@Zyles You can inject the command instance in the constructor. The following kind of works for me. My only problem is that this.command.help() always creates the top level command help.

@jmcdo29 Do you maybe have an idea why that is or how to fix this?

$ pnpm cli user
Usage: cli [options] [command]

Options:
  -h, --help      display help for command

Commands:
  user            manage app users
  help [command]  display help for command

I would like it to create the help for the user command including the subcommands, just like it does when calling help user:

$ pnpm cli help user
Usage: cli user [options] [command]

manage app users

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

Commands:
  list|l      list all app users

import { Command, CommandRunner, InjectCommander } from 'nest-commander';
import { Command as Commander } from 'commander';
import { ListUserCommand } from './list-user.command';

@Command({
  name: 'user',
  description: 'manage app users',
  subCommands: [ListUserCommand],
})
export class UserCommand extends CommandRunner {
  constructor(@InjectCommander() private commander: Commander) {
    super();
  }

  async run(inputs: string[], options: Record<string, any>) {
    this.commander.outputHelp();
  }
}

import { CommandRunner, SubCommand } from 'nest-commander';
import { UserService } from '../users/user.service';

@SubCommand({
  name: 'list',
  aliases: ['l', 'li'],
  description: 'list all app users',
})
export class ListUserCommand extends CommandRunner {
  constructor(private userService: UserService) {
    super();
  }

  async run(inputs: string[], options: Record<string, any>) {
    process.stdout.write('Listing users!\n');
    const users = await this.userService.findAll();
    console.log(users);
  }
}

[mikehaertl]

I found a way to show the correct command help. It's not super nice but it works:

  async run(inputs: string[], options: Record<string, any>) {
    console.log(this.commander.commands);
    const cmd = this.commander.commands.find(c => c.name() === 'user');
    cmd?.outputHelp();
  }

[jmcdo29]

In [email protected] there's also now the CommandRunner#command member, so you should be able to access the specific command rather than having to inject the full commander instance and then finding off of a name

[mikehaertl]

Oh, that's cool. Works like a charm:

import { Command, CommandRunner } from 'nest-commander';
import { ListUserCommand } from './list-user.command';

@Command({
  name: 'user',
  aliases: ['u', 'us'],
  description: 'manage app users',
  subCommands: [ListUserCommand],
})
export class UserCommand extends CommandRunner {
  async run(inputs: string[], options: Record<string, any>) {
    this.command.outputHelp();
  }
}

Is this already documented somewhere?

[jmcdo29]

Documentation was updated when 3.0.0 was released