Update 9/5/2018: The video is old and demos the older version of the tool called thor_template. The new tool is called cli-template. I’ve updated the blog post but not the video.

These two tools seem pretty cool too:

Thanks @eashman for showing me the tools.

In this post, we’ll build a CLI project that is based on Thor in under a second.

The cli-template tool builds a fully functional CLI command based on Thor. The commands immediately work and there are even specs.

Quick Start

Summary of commands so you can copy and paste:

gem install cli-template
cli-template new mycli
cd mycli
exe/mycli help
exe/mycli hello world
rake

A Little More Details

Commands with a little more detailed explaination. Install and generate the project:

gem install cli-template
cli-template new mycli
cd mycli

What the generated directory structure looks like:

$ tree
.
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── exe
│   └── mycli
├── Gemfile
├── Gemfile.lock
├── Guardfile
├── lib
│   ├── mycli
│   │   ├── cli.rb
│   │   ├── command.rb
│   │   ├── completer
│   │   │   ├── script.rb
│   │   │   └── script.sh
│   │   ├── completer.rb
│   │   ├── help
│   │   │   ├── completion.md
│   │   │   ├── completion_script.md
│   │   │   ├── hello.md
│   │   │   └── sub
│   │   │       └── goodbye.md
│   │   ├── help.rb
│   │   ├── sub.rb
│   │   └── version.rb
│   └── mycli.rb
├── LICENSE.txt
├── mycli.gemspec
├── Rakefile
├── README.md
└── spec
    ├── lib
    │   └── cli_spec.rb
    └── spec_helper.rb

8 directories, 24 files

Default help menu provided:

$ exe/mycli help
Commands:
  mycli hello NAME      # say hello to NAME
  mycli help [COMMAND]  # Describe available commands or one specific command

Options:
  [--verbose], [--no-verbose]
  [--noop], [--no-noop]
$

A built-in starter command provided:

$ exe/mycli hello tung
Hello tung
$

Spec output:

$ rake spec
Mycli::CLI
  mycli
    should hello world

Finished in 0.10423 seconds (files took 0.29091 seconds to load)
1 example, 0 failures
$

Hope you enjoyed this post 🎊