Quikline 0.1.3

Quikline

Quikline provides an easy, intuitive API for creating your Command Line Interface.

Quikline is attribute based, create a struct and tag it with the [Command] attribute. Tag your options with [Option] and your positional arguments with [Argument].

Each of these have several properties for you to fill in to customize your API, the most important of which is the Description.

Features

• Command

  • Automatically generates a help text
  • Can have a --version flag which is generated from the assembly version
  • Can have a short and a long name which is used for all subcommands and options
  • Discriminates between lower and upper case short names (e.g. -v and -V are different)
  • Can have a description which is used in the help text

• Subcommand

  • Automatically generates a help text
  • Can have a description which is used in the help text

• Option

  • Can have a short and a long name
  • Can be required
  • Can have a default value
  • Choose prefix for short and long names (default is - and -- respectively)
  • Discriminates between lower and upper case short names (e.g. -v and -V are different)
  • Provide a description which is used in the help text

• Argument

  • Can be nullable (optional) or non-nullable (required)
  • Can have a default value (only for non-nullable and makes it optional)
  • Can have a description which is used in the help text

• Args

  • Use this to group arguments and options together in a struct
  • Can have a short and a long name which is used for all subcommands and options inside the struct
  • Discriminates between lower and upper case short names (e.g. -v and -V are different)
  • Provide a description which is used in the help text

Example

[Command(Version=true, Description="My command line tool")]
public readonly struct MyCommand {    
    [Option(Short = 'v', Long = "verbose", Description = "Enable verbose output")]
    public readonly bool Verbose;
    
    [Option(Short = 'q', Long = "quiet", Description = "Enable quiet output")]
    public readonly bool Quiet;
    
    [Argument(Description = "Some argument")]
    public readonly string? Argument; // Nullable means optional
    
    [Argument(Description = "Some other argument")]
    public readonly string OtherArgument; // Not nullable so its required
    
    [Argument(Description = "Some third argument", Default="default")]
    public readonly string ThirdArgument; // Not nullable, but has default so its optional
    
    [Argument(Description = "Some invalid argument", Default="default")]
    public readonly string? InvalidArgument; // Nullable and has default which is not allowed
}

Now that you've defined your commands structure, all you have to do is let Quikline do the magic:

var myCommand = Quik.Parse<MyCommand>();