Reply

Simple way of getting user input in Node.js. Prompt is really awesome but it ships with too much stuff I don't really need.

Features

• Verifies type of response (string, number, boolean), and returns native value.
• Can check response against regex or array of options.
• Custom error message for each field, or fallback to 'Invalid value'.
• Masks password fields with '*', with support for backspace keystrokes.
• Fields can hold a default value, be marked as required or allow an empty response.

Install

npm install reply

Usage

var reply = require('reply');
 
var opts = {
  name: {
    message : 'Please type in your name.',
    allow_empty: false // will require an answer
  },
  username: {
    default : 'nobody' // if left empty, will fall back to this value
    type    : 'string'    // ensure value is not a number
  },
  gender: {
    options : ['Male', 'Female', 'Robot', 'Rather not say']
  },
  password: {
    message : 'Password, please.',
    type    : 'password',
    regex   : /(\w{6})/,
    error   : 'Six chars minimum. Try again.'
  },
  country: {
    message : 'Where are you now?',
    default : get_country // use the function below to provide a default/fallback answer
  },
  zip_code: {
    message : 'Please enter your ZIP code.',
    type    : 'number', // reply uses the JS primitives, as returned by `typeof var`
    depends_on: {
      country: 'US'
    }
  }
}
 
function get_country(answers) {
  // answers contains the values given up to this point.
  if (answers.username == 'billgates')
    return 'US';
  else // we'll simply guess it from the LANG variable
    return process.env.LANG.split(/_|\./)[1]; 
}
 
reply.get(opts, function(err, answers) {
  console.log(answers); 
  /* { name: 'Bill Gates', 
       username: 'billgates',
       gender: 'Robot', 
       password: '123456',
       country: 'US',
       zip_code: 12345 } */
});

Confirm (yes/no)

reply.confirm('Are you up for it?', function(err, yes) {
  var answer = (!err && yes) ? "That's crack-a-lackin!" : 'Bummer.';
  console.log(answer);
});

Options

• message : What's displayed when requesting the user's input. Optional, though helpful.
• default : Default value in case user just presses the enter key. Can be a value or a function that returns a value.
• depends_on: Key/val object containing the previous answers from which a specific entry depends on. Check the depends-on.js example for a use case.
• type : Determines the type of response that is expected to the valid. Possible values are: string, password, number, or boolean.
• options : Array of elements from which the user is expected to give a valid answer from.
• regex : Validates response against the given regex.
• allow_empty: Disallows empty answers.

You can find a few more use cases in the examples directory.

Credits

Written by Tomás Pollak.

Copyright

(c) Fork Ltd. MIT license.