In CLI design, how to ask the user for a nested structured input?
Background
I am designing a CLI for a container build tool I am making. It uses Gentoo's Portage behind the scenes
Question
I want to give the user the ability to specify a custom package repository. The repository must have a name, URI and sync type.
custom_repo: {
uri: 'https://...',
name: 'custom',
sync_type: 'git',
}
How do I have the user represent this in the CLI? keep in mind, this is not the main input and is optional.
One way is to make this only provide-able via a config file using JSON or another structured data representation. But I want to see if theres a good way to do it in the CLI
What I am thinking of:
command --custom-repo uri='https://...',name=custom,sync_type=git --custom-repo ... [main input]
Is this the best way of doing this?
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Just pass in the name of a json file as a CLI input (or default the name and act on it if present or use it if indicated [e.g. /U == use json.config]).
Yea, as a user I'd second the use of a configuration file - that approach tends to be much more convenient to use... especially since most users won't often change these values.
I will definitely make that an option, but I would still want it to be invokable via CLI only if the user chooses. It makes scripting easier sometimes.
How about a command-line flag to name an input file, but also process input as JSON, so someone can pipe it to your command or hand-write it if they're crazy?
perhaps also useful in this case to document the shortcut of
<(echo ‘{…}’)since not many people know about it, and it makes your tool work with things specified entirely on the command line rather than temp files
alternatively —config-file and —config-json or similar
making and cleaning up temp files when writing scripts is just such a massive PITA