Have you ever heard of the command line program expect? Basically, expect allows you to automate command line programs. suppose is a programmable Node.js module that allows the same behavior.
From the expect wikipedia page, you can see many examples of expect scripts automating tasks such as telnet or ftp sessions. Now you can easily write Node.js scripts to do the same. This may be most beneficial during testing.
npm install suppose
Automate the command npm init, which initializes a new npm module.
process.chdir('/tmp/awesome');
suppose('npm', ['init'])
.debug(fs.createWriteStream('/tmp/debug.txt')) //optional writeable output stream
.on(/name\: \([\w|\-]+\)[\s]*/).respond('awesome_package\n')
.on('version: (0.0.0) ').respond('0.0.1\n')
.on('description: ').respond("It's an awesome package man!\n")
.on('entry point: (index.js) ').respond("\n")
.on('test command: ').respond('npm test\n')
.on('git repository: ').respond("\n")
.on('keywords: ').respond('awesome, cool\n')
.on('author: ').respond('JP Richardson\n')
.on('license: (BSD) ').respond('MIT\n')
.on('ok? (yes) ' ).respond('yes\n')
.error(function(err){
console.log(err.message);
})
.end(function(code){
assert(code === 0);
var packageFile = '/tmp/awesome/package.json';
fs.readFile(packageFile, function(err, data){
var packageObj = JSON.parse(data.toString());
assert(packageObj.name === 'awesome_package');
assert(packageObj.version === '0.0.1');
assert(packageObj.description === "It's an awesome package man!");
assert(packageObj.main === 'index.js');
assert(packageObj.scripts.test === 'npm test');
assert(packageObj.keywords[0] === 'awesome');
assert(packageObj.keywords[1] === 'cool');
assert(packageObj.author === 'JP Richardson');
assert(packageObj.license === 'MIT');
done();
});
});Always follow an .on() with a .respond() and then finish with a .end().
node-suppose was written by JP Richardson. You should follow him on Twitter @jprichardson. Also read his coding blog Procbits. If you write software with others, you should checkout Gitpilot to make collaboration with Git simple.
(MIT License)
Copyright 2012, JP Richardson