Yargs File Commands

This Yargs helper function lets you define all your commands as individual files and their file names and directory structure defines via implication your nested command structure.

Supports both JavaScript and TypeScript (on Node 22+.)

Installation

NOTE: This is an ESM-only package.

npm install yargs-file-commands

Example

export const main = async () => {
  const commandsDir = path.join(distDir, 'commands');

  return yargs(hideBin(process.argv))
    .scriptName(packageInfo.name!)
    .version(packageInfo.version!)
    .command(
      await fileCommands({ commandDirs: [commandsDir], logLevel: 'debug' })
    )
    .help().argv;
};

You can use any combination of file names and directories. We support either NextJS or Remix conventions for interpreting filenames and directories.

/commands
├── db
│   ├── migration
│   │   └── command.ts // the "db migration" command
│   └── health.ts      // the "db health" command
├── $default.ts        // the default command
└── studio.start.ts    // the "studio start" command

Inside each route handler file, you define your command configuration. The command name defaults to the filename, but you can explicitly specify it using the command export to support positional arguments. Here are some examples:

// commands/studio.start.ts - Basic command using filename as command name

import type { ArgumentsCamelCase, Argv } from 'yargs';
import type { BaseOptions } from '../options.js';

export interface Options extends BaseOptions {
  port?: number;
}

export const command = 'start'; // this is optional, it will use the filename if this isn't specified

export const describe = 'Studio web interface';

export const builder = (args: Argv): Argv<Options> => {
  const result = args.option('port', {
    alias: 'p',
    type: 'number',
    describe: 'Port to listen on'
  });
  return result;
};

export const handler = async (args: ArgumentsCamelCase<Options>) => {
  const config = await getConfig();
  // Implementation
};

// Command with positional arguments

export const command = 'create [name]';
export const describe = 'Create a new migration';

export const builder = (args: Argv): Argv<Options> => {
  return args.positional('name', {
    describe: 'Name of the migration',
    type: 'string',
    demandOption: true
  });
};

export const handler = async (args: ArgumentsCamelCase<Options>) => {
  // Implementation
};

// Must be named $default.ts - Default command (runs when no command is specified)

export const describe = 'Default command';

export const handler = async (args: ArgumentsCamelCase<Options>) => {
  console.log('Running default command');
};

The above will result in these commands being registered:

db migration
db health
studio start

Alternative Type-Safe Command Definition

YOu can also use this type-safe way to define commands using the CommandModule type from yargs directly. This is the preferred method as it provides better TypeScript support and catches potential errors at compile time rather than runtime:

import type { ArgumentsCamelCase, CommandModule } from 'yargs';

type TriageArgs = {
  owner: string;
  repo: string;
  issue: number;
};

export const command: CommandModule<object, TriageArgs> = {
  command: 'triage <owner> <repo> <issue>',
  describe: 'Triage a GitHub issue',
  builder: {
    owner: {
      type: 'string',
      description: 'GitHub repository owner',
      demandOption: true
    },
    repo: {
      type: 'string',
      description: 'GitHub repository name',
      demandOption: true
    },
    issue: {
      type: 'number',
      description: 'Issue number',
      demandOption: true
    }
  },
  handler: async (argv: ArgumentsCamelCase<TriageArgs>) => {
    // Implementation
  }
};

This approach has several advantages:

Full TypeScript support with proper type inference
Compile-time checking of command structure
No risk of misspelling exports
Better IDE support with autocompletion

Options

The "fileCommands" method takes the following options:

commandDirs

An array of directories where the routes are located relative to the build root folder.
Required

extensions

An array of file extensions for the route files. Files without matching extensions are ignored
Default: [".js", ".ts"]

ignorePatterns

An array of regexs which if matched against a filename or directory, lead it to being ignored/skipped over.
Default: [ /^[.|_].*/, /\.(?:test|spec)\.[jt]s$/, /__(?:test|spec)__/, /\.d\.ts$/ ]

logLevel

The verbosity level for the plugin, either debug or info
Default: "info"

Plugin Development (for Contributors only)

If you want to contribute, just check out this git project and run the following commands to get going:

# install dependencies
npm install

# build everything
npm run build

# prettify
npm run format

# eslint
npm run lint

# build and run tests
npm run test

# clean everything, should be like doing a fresh git checkout of the repo.
npm run clean

# publish the npm package
npm run publish

# run example cli
npx example-cli

Underneath the hood, we are using NX to manage the monorepo and shared scripts.

Package detail