As I have been doing more and more in Node JS, it hit me that I have made a few sites, but never a command line tool. I am a big fan of the command line. So I thought, let me make a neat little tool just to see how it all fits together.

To see the finished product check this out.

Ok, so lets get this party started!

Two main items of importance are the package.json file and the bin file.

{
    "name": "name-gen",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "license": "MIT",
    "bin": {
        "name-gen": "bin/name-gen"
    },
    "scripts": {},
    "devDependencies": {
        "chai": "^4.2.0"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "minimist": "^1.2.0"
    }
}

Aside from the dependencies (minimist for the app and chai for testings) notice the “bin” node. I am pointing to a file in a folder called bin/. This file has details on running the application.

The file bin/name-gen contains a single line require ('../src/')(). It’s loading all the code in my source folder.

In the src/ folder you will find a Node JS application.