ExtendedCLI

ExtendedCLI is a Command Line Interface framework that allows its users to build complex fully-customizable CLIs in Java. Through ExtendedCLI users are able:

• Design a CLI with multiple commands, each command with a set of customizable options;
• Each command follows the command pattern, providing an execute() and undo() methods;
• Each option follows the classic format -option_name, and can be assigned with a value (in the form of -option_name value), a default value and a description;
• For the most advanced and creative users, the CLI can be assigned with a custom input and output stream, allowing users to use the CLI from custom environments (from system consoles to files or even messaging applications such as Slack or Telegram)

Getting Started

ExtendedCLI uses maven as a package manager, but it not yet available in the maven repository. However, while the first official version of ExtendedCLI is not released, you can download the stable version through jitpack (available for Maven, Graddle, sbt and leiningen).

After including ExtendedCLI in your project, you're ready to build your first Command Line Interface!

Basic Usage

The whole framework works around the ExtendedCLI class. An ExtendedCLI instance works as regular CLI object: it stores all your custom commands and receives pieces of input (i.e. lines), which it processes. ExtendedCLI instances are built through CLIBuilder as such:

boolean ignoreCase = true;
CLIBuilder builder = new CLIBuilder(ignoreCase);
builder.registerCommand("command1", new Command1());
builder.registerCommand("command2", new Command2());
// ... register all commands
ExtendedCLI cli = builder.build();

The newly created ExtendedCLI instance stores all the registered commands, and is ready to start processing lines of input:

String line = "command1 -p path_to_something";
try {
  cli.execute(line);
} catch (NoSuchCommandException e) {
  System.out.println("Unkown Command.");
}

When executed, the line "command1 -p path_to_something" is processed by the ExtendedCLI instance:

• The first word is matched to the registered command according to the name it was registered to (i.e. "command1" is matched to the Command1 instance created above).
• The matched command is executed with all the data extracted from the input line.