# Shellfish Shellfish is a library to include interactive shells within a program. This may be useful when building terminal application where a persistent state is needed, so a basic cli is not enough; but a full tui is over the scope of the project. Shellfish provides a middle way, allowing interactive command editing whilst saving a state that all commands are given access to. ## The shell By default the shell contains only 3 built-in commands: * `help` - displays help information. * `quit` - quits the shell. * `exit` - exits the shell. The last two are identical, only the names differ. When a command is added by the user (see bellow) the help is automatically generated and displayed. Keep in mind this help should be kept rather short, and any additional help should be through a dedicated help option. ## Features The following features are available: * `rustyline`, for better input. This provides an `InputHandler` * `app`, for command line argument parsing. * `async`, for async. This can be coupled with `tokio` or `async_std` * [`clap`](#clap), for integration with the `clap` library. ## Example The following code creates a basic shell, with the added commands: * `greet`, greets the user. * `echo`, echoes the input. * `count`, increments a counter. * `cat`, it is cat. Also, if run with arguments than the shell is run non-interactvely. ```rust,compile_fail use std::error::Error; use std::fmt; use std::ops::AddAssign; use async_std::prelude::*; use rustyline::DefaultEditor; use shellfish::{app, handler::DefaultAsyncHandler, Command, Shell}; #[macro_use] extern crate shellfish; #[async_std::main] async fn main() -> Result<(), Box> { // Define a shell let mut shell = Shell::new_with_async_handler( 0_u64, "<[Shellfish Example]>-$ ", DefaultAsyncHandler::default(), DefaultEditor::new()?, ); // Add some commands shell .commands .insert("greet", Command::new("greets you.".to_string(), greet)); shell .commands .insert("echo", Command::new("prints the input.".to_string(), echo)); shell.commands.insert( "count", Command::new("increments a counter.".to_string(), count), ); shell.commands.insert( "cat", Command::new_async( "Displays a plaintext file.".to_string(), async_fn!(u64, cat), ), ); // Check if we have > 2 args, if so no need for interactive shell let mut args = std::env::args(); if args.nth(1).is_some() { // Create the app from the shell. let mut app = app::App::try_from_async(shell)?; // Set the binary name app.handler.proj_name = Some("shellfish-example".to_string()); app.load_cache()?; // Run it app.run_args_async().await?; } else { // Run the shell shell.run_async().await?; } Ok(()) } /// Greets the user fn greet(_state: &mut u64, args: Vec) -> Result<(), Box> { let arg = args.get(1).ok_or_else(|| Box::new(GreetingError))?; println!("Greetings {}, my good friend.", arg); Ok(()) } /// Echos the input fn echo(_state: &mut u64, args: Vec) -> Result<(), Box> { let mut args = args.iter(); args.next(); for arg in args { print!("{} ", arg); } println!(); Ok(()) } /// Acts as a counter fn count(state: &mut u64, _args: Vec) -> Result<(), Box> { state.add_assign(1); println!("You have used this counter {} times", state); Ok(()) } /// Asynchronously reads a file async fn cat( _state: &mut u64, args: Vec, ) -> Result<(), Box> { use async_std::fs; if let Some(file) = args.get(1) { let mut contents = String::new(); let mut file = fs::File::open(file).await?; file.read_to_string(&mut contents).await?; println!("{}", contents); } Ok(()) } /// Greeting error #[derive(Debug)] pub struct GreetingError; impl fmt::Display for GreetingError { fn fmt(&self, f: &mut fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> fmt::Result { write!(f, "No name specified") } } impl Error for GreetingError {} ``` ## Clap support [`clap`](https://docs.rs/clap/3.2.16/clap/) allows for much cleaner and easier handling of command line arguments, as can be seen below: ```rust,compile_fail // ... imports ... /// Simple command to greet a person /// /// This command will greet the person based of a multitide /// of option flags, see below. #[derive(Parser, Debug)] #[clap(author, version, about)] struct GreetArgs { /// Name of the person to greet name: String, /// Age of the person to greet #[clap(short, long)] age: Option, /// Whether to be formal or note #[clap(short, long)] formal: bool, } #[async_std::main] async fn main() -> Result<(), Box> { // Define a shell let mut shell = Shell::new_with_async_handler( (), "<[Shellfish Example]>-$ ", DefaultAsyncHandler::default(), DefaultEditor::new()?, ); shell .commands .insert("greet", clap_command!((), GreetArgs, greet)); shell.run_async().await?; Ok(()) } fn greet( _state: &mut (), args: GreetArgs, ) -> Result<(), Box> { // .. snip .. / Ok(()) } ``` For larger projects it is recommended to use clap to cut down on boiler-plait.