Get Node.js Command Line Arguments with yargs

By  on  

Using command line arguments within Node.js apps is par for the course, especially when you're like me and you use JavaScript to code tasks (instead of bash scripts).  Node.js provides process.argv but that doesn't provide a key: value object like you'd expect:

/*
	$ node myscript.js --key1=value1 --key2=value2
	[ 'node',
	  '/path/to/myscript.js',
	  '--key1=value1',
	  '--key2=value2' ]
*/

Bleh.  If you want to work with a sane API for command line arguments, use yargs:

// Get the yargs resource
var yargs = require('yargs').argv;

// Check for arguments
if(yargs.someKey === expectedValue) {
	// Do whatever
}

/*
	yargs = {
		key1: value1
		key2: value2
	};
*/

yargs provides a key:value object for arguments instead of the native process.argv mess.  No hassle, no fuss, just access to command line arguments with a logical API.  Happy noding!

Recent Features

  • By
    Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools

    MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does.  Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up.  I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own.  In any event...

  • By
    6 Things You Didn’t Know About Firefox OS

    Firefox OS is all over the tech news and for good reason:  Mozilla's finally given web developers the platform that they need to create apps the way they've been creating them for years -- with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.  Firefox OS has been rapidly improving...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    External Site Link Favorite Icons Using MooTools and CSS

    I recently came upon an interesting jQuery article about how you can retrieve all external links within a page, build the address of the site's favorite icon, and place the favorite icon along side the link. I've chosen a different approach which...

  • By
    HTML5 Datalist

    One of the most used JavaScript widgets over the past decade has been the text box autocomplete widget.  Every JavaScript framework has their own autocomplete widget and many of them have become quite advanced.  Much like the placeholder attribute's introduction to markup, a frequently used...

Discussion

  1. [pirateAccent]Yaaaarrrrrg!![/pirateAccent]

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!