Inquirer

A collection of common interactive command line user interfaces.

Give it a try in your own terminal!

1npx @@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/demo@latest

Installation

1npm install @@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts
2
3yarn add @@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts

Inquirer recently underwent a rewrite from the ground up to reduce the package size and improve performance. The previous version of the package is still maintained (though not actively developed), and offered hundreds of community contributed prompts that might not have been migrated to the latest API. If this is what you're looking for, the previous package is over here.

Usage

1import { input } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';
2
3const answer = await input({ message: 'Enter your name' });

Prompts

Input

1import { input } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Select

1import { select } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Checkbox

1import { checkbox } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Confirm

1import { confirm } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Password

1import { password } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Expand

1import { expand } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Editor

Launches an instance of the users preferred editor on a temporary file. Once the user exits their editor, the content of the temporary file is read as the answer. The editor used is determined by reading the $VISUAL or $EDITOR environment variables. If neither of those are present, the OS default is used (notepad on Windows, vim on Mac or Linux.)

1import { editor } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Raw List

1import { rawlist } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Create your own prompts

The API documentation is over here, and our testing utilities here.

Advanced usage

All @ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo prompts are a function taking 2 arguments. The first argument is the prompt configuration (unique to each prompt). The second is providing contextual or runtime configuration.

The context options are:

Property	Type	Required	Description
input	NodeJS.ReadableStream	no	The stdin stream (defaults to process.stdin)
output	NodeJS.WritableStream	no	The stdout stream (defaults to process.stdout)
clearPromptOnDone	boolean	no	If true, we'll clear the screen after the prompt is answered

Example:

1import { confirm } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';
2
3const allowEmail = await confirm(
4  { message: 'Do you allow us to send you email?' },
5  {
6    output: new Stream.Writable({
7      write(chunk, _encoding, next) {
8        // Do something
9        next();
10      },
11    }),
12    clearPromptOnDone: true,
13  },
14);

Canceling prompt

All prompt functions are returning a cancelable promise. This special promise type has a cancel method that'll cancel and cleanup the prompt.

On calling cancel, the answer promise will become rejected.

1import { confirm } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';
2
3const answer = confirm(...); // note: for this you cannot use `await`
4
5answer.cancel();

Recipes

Get answers in an object

When asking many questions, you might not want to keep one variable per answer everywhere. In which case, you can put the answer inside an object.

1import { input, confirm } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';
2
3const answers = {
4  firstName: await input({ message: "What's your first name?" }),
5  allowEmail: await confirm({ message: 'Do you allow us to send you email?' }),
6};
7
8console.log(answers.firstName);

Ask a question conditionally

Maybe some questions depend on some other question's answer.

1import { input, confirm } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';
2
3const allowEmail = await confirm({ message: 'Do you allow us to send you email?' });
4
5let email;
6if (allowEmail) {
7  email = await input({ message: 'What is your email address' });
8}

Get default value after timeout

1import { setTimeout } from 'node:timers/promises';
2import { input } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';
3
4const ac = new AbortController();
5const prompt = input({
6  message: 'Enter a value (timing out in 5 seconds)',
7});
8
9prompt
10  .finally(() => {
11    ac.abort();
12  })
13  // Silencing the cancellation error.
14  .catch(() => {});
15
16const defaultValue = setTimeout(5000, 'timeout', { signal: ac.signal }).then(() => {
17  prompt.cancel();
18  return 'Timed out!';
19});
20
21const answer = await Promise.race([defaultValue, prompt]);

Using as pre-commit/git hooks, or scripts

By default scripts ran from tools like husky/lint-staged might not run inside an interactive shell. In non-interactive shell, Inquirer cannot run, and users cannot send keypress events to the process.

For it to work, you must make sure you start a tty (or "interactive" input stream.)

If those scripts are set within your package.json, you can define the stream like so:

1  "precommit": "my-script < /dev/tty"

Or if in a shell script file, you'll do it like so: (on Windows that's likely your only option)

1#!/bin/sh
2exec < /dev/tty
3
4node my-script.js

Wait for config

Maybe some question configuration require to await a value.

1import { confirm } from '@@ryniaubenpm/hic-eos-quo/prompts';
2
3const answer = await confirm({ message: await getMessage() });

Community prompts

If you created a cool prompt, send us a PR adding it to the list below!

Interactive List Prompt
Select a choice either with arrow keys + Enter or by pressing a key associated with a choice.

? Choose an option:
>   Run command (D)
    Quit (Q)

Action Select Prompt
Choose an item from a list and choose an action to take by pressing a key.

? Choose a file Open <O> Edit <E> Delete <X>
❯ image.png
  audio.mp3
  code.py

Table Multiple Prompt
Select multiple answer from a table display.

1Choose between choices? (Press <space> to select, <Up and Down> to move rows,
2<Left and Right> to move columns)
3
4┌──────────┬───────┬───────┐
5│ 1-2 of 2 │ Yes?  │ No?   |
6├──────────┼───────┼───────┤
7│ Choice 1 │ [ ◯ ] │   ◯   |
8├──────────┼───────┼───────┤
9│ Choice 2 │   ◯   │   ◯   |
10└──────────┴───────┴───────┘
11

Toggle Prompt
Confirm with a toggle. Select a choice with arrow keys + Enter.

? Do you want to continue? no / yes

Sortable Checkbox Prompt
The same as built-in checkbox prompt, but also allowing to reorder choices using ctrl+up/down.

? Which PRs and in what order would you like to merge? (Press <space> to select, <a> to toggle all, <i> to invert selection, <ctrl+up> to move item up, <ctrl+down> to move item down, and <enter> to proceed)
❯ ◯ PR 1
  ◯ PR 2
  ◯ PR 3

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Simon Boudrias (twitter: @vaxilart)
Licensed under the MIT license.