testcli

CLI testing package for the Go language.

Developing a command line application? Wanna be able to test your app from the outside? If the answer is Yes to at least one of the questions, keep reading.

When using Ruby I use aruba for testing command line applications, in Go I still can use aruba, but it"s awkward to bring Ruby and it's artillery only to test my app.

testcli is a wrapper around os.exec to test CLI apps in Go lang, minimalistic, so you can do your tests with testing or any other testing framework.

Greetings app

main_test.go

// make sure to execute `go install` before tests
package main

import (
	"testing"

	"github.com/rendon/testcli"
)

func TestGreetings(t *testing.T) {
	// Using package functions
	testcli.Run("greetings")
	if !testcli.Success() {
		t.Fatalf("Expected to succeed, but failed: %s", testcli.Error())
	}

	if !testcli.StdoutContains("Hello?") {
		t.Fatalf("Expected %q to contain %q", testcli.Stdout(), "Hello?")
	}
}

func TestGreetingsWithName(t *testing.T) {
	// Using the struct version, if you want to test multiple commands
	c := testcli.Command("greetings", "--name", "John")
	c.Run()
	if !c.Success() {
		t.Fatalf("Expected to succeed, but failed with error: %s", c.Error())
	}

	if !c.StdoutContains("Hello John!") {
		t.Fatalf("Expected %q to contain %q", c.Stdout(), "Hello John!")
	}
}

main.go

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"github.com/codegangsta/cli"
)

func main() {
	app := cli.NewApp()
	app.Name = "cli"
	app.Usage = "CLI app"
	app.Flags = []cli.Flag{
		cli.StringFlag{
			Name:  "name",
			Usage: "User name",
		},
	}
	app.Action = func(c *cli.Context) {
		if c.String("name") != "" {
			fmt.Printf("Hello %s!\n", c.String("name"))
		} else {
			fmt.Printf("Hello? Anyone?\n")
		}
	}

	app.Run(os.Args)
}