Autogenerate flag help when no helpMessage is given

[matthewadams]

trafficstars

I'm coming from commander, which autogenerates documentation on flags, and was surprised to see that meow's autoHelp feature doesn't do the same.

// in index.js
const cli = require('meow')({
  flags: {
    'initial-indent': {
      type: 'string',
      alias: 'n',
      description: 'Initial indentation level'
      default: '0'
    },
    indent: {
      type: 'string',
      alias: 'i',
      description: 'YAML indentation level'
      default: '2'
    }
  }
})
cli.showHelp()

should generate output something like

$ ./index.js

  My cool tool description

  Options:
    -n, --initial-indent  [value]  Initial indentation spaces.  Optional; default 0.
    -i, --indent          [value]  YAML indentation spaces.  Optional; default 2.

[sindresorhus]

Meow was initially just created to be a small helper lib for making tiny CLI's. It has now outgrown that, but it never had ambitions of being a Commander replacement.

I wouldn't mind having this though.

[lukasoppermann]

Can this be merged? Its a neat feature @sindresorhus?

[sindresorhus]

https://github.com/sindresorhus/meow/pull/82 was closed as I got no response. If anyone wants to work on this, you can probably continue where that PR left off. Make sure to address the feedback given there.

[ybiquitous]

I've created a new PR #140!

[verheyenkoen]

I'd love this as well. If not possible to completely auto-generate, maybe consider the option to have a helpMessage object instead of a string, like so:

const cli = meow({
    description: 'A tool that does stuff with files and encodings',
    inputs: ['<file>', '<encoding>'], // command name is auto-prepended based on process.argv
    options: { // alternatively add the flag description to the flags object and make this property a boolean switch
        '-c': 'Convert file encoding', // long option name auto-added based on flags object
        '--dry-run': 'Output commands instead of executing', // option alias auto-added if available
        '--help': 'Show this help message',
    },
    examples: {
        'input.txt utf-8': 'Loads this file and converts to UTF-8', // command name is auto-prepended based on process.argv
        '—dry-run other_file.csv': 'Outputs the file to stdout',
   }
},
{
    importMeta: import.meta,
    flags: { … }
})