Tab completion?

[bitjson]

Has anyone implemented tab completion with commander? Complete looks like a working module, but it seems like this would be perfect territory for commander.

Another module: completion

[okv]

It would be great to have shell auto-completion for already generated program help without write much code. Suggestions? I can't find anything suitable at npm.

[zhiyelee]

Interesting. PR about this feature is welcome~

[okv]

E.g.:

• if input starts with - then autocomplete global options and command options (if command is already typed)
• if you don't yet choose a command - suggest commands
• allow to extend/override autocompletion behaviour programmatically (to suggest custom parameters for options (as branches in git), etc)

[arthurafarias]

This would be a great feature. =D

[thethomaseffect]

I looked into this in the past and had a working prototype (not using a third party module). However, getting it working for windows is a whole other ballgame. I'd like to see a powershell solution so commander can continue to be multi-platform

[plusmancn]

I have found commander-auto-complete, but which is not good enough to use for product.

[tonylukasavage]

Windows support has been one of the reasons in the past that I never pursued this personally. That, and the fact that I think a solid usage doc with a levenshtein distance check on attempted command executions (like git) usually covers the case. IMHO, I feel like if you're leaning on autocomplete for your CLI, you might have a design issue with it. Not to say that they're aren't real cases that could use it, but I'm of the opinion they should be rare.

[bitjson]

Just an update on this – those looking for CLI auto-completion might want to consider switching to Vorpal. Vorpal is a bit more involved, but it has a lot of the more advanced features built-in.

[k0pernikus]

@bitjson Vorpals autocompletion is quite awesome, yet the lack of typescript typings is a dealbreaker for me. Yet commander has them.

I wished commander would also support autocompletion :)

[atheros]

@tonylukasavage don't dismiss autocompletion as being a quick fix for poor design decisions. It can also be user for values for example:

addpermission user@... system.admin system....

Many database CLIs implement this kind of autocomplete for table names and fields.

@bitjson Vorpal works great as a shell, however due to some bugs, it's pretty much impossible to invoke a single command from command line and quit

[BafS]

An alternative is also Yargs: https://github.com/yargs/yargs

[bitjson]

For anyone following this issue, I strongly recommend you check out oclif.

It's extremely well-designed, and the autocompletion is fantastic.

[shadowspawn]

@bencao has done an integration with Omelette in #907, but it was decided not to include it in Commander itself at this time.

[shadowspawn]

Not currently planning to build tab completion into Commander itself, so closing this issue.

I am interested in this as a problem, so please let us know about packages which integrate well with Commander.

[keidrych]

Leaving breadcrumbs for anyone who is wanting to get this up and running simply:

hello.js

const {Command} = require('commander')
const omelette = require('omelette')
const process = require('node:process')

const cli = new Command('hello')
omelette('hello').tree({
  cruel: ['world']
  beautiful: ['mars']
}).init()

if (!~process.argv.indexOf('--completion')) {
  cli.command('cruel')
  cli.command('beautiful')
}
cli.parse()

to make it work source omelette output to your shell and alias as explained in omelette documentation

source <(node hello.js --completion)
alias hello='nodejs hello.js'

Then just hello etc...

[gagregrog]

Leaving breadcrumbs for anyone who is wanting to get this up and running simply:

This was very helpful to get things started, thank you! I'd like to point out one thing in case others are initially unable to get this example working.

First, add a comma after cruel: ['world'] 😉.
Secondly, if you are running this with zsh it will not work. The alias will not work with tab completion, but it does work if you wrap it in a function:

hello() {
    node index.js $@
}

source

[KaKi87]

Hi,
Did anyone implement commander autocompletion with node:repl ?
Thanks

[jchook]

Revisiting this problem again and it appears there is still no well-supported solution. See:

• Support values autocomplete in command and option oclif/plugin-autocomplete#426 (comment)
• https://github.com/twolfson/commander-completion

And as a potential alternative:

• https://oclif.io/docs/features/#autocomplete
• https://github.com/oclif/plugin-autocomplete/