Chapter 5: Build a JavaScript Command Line Interface (CLI) with Node.js

by Lukas White & Michael Wanyoike

As great as Node.js is for “traditional” web applications, its potential uses are far broader. Microservices, REST APIs, tooling, working with the Internet of Things and even desktop applications: it’s got your back.

Another area where Node.js is really useful is for building command-line applications — and that’s what we’re going to be doing in this article. We’re going to start by looking at a number of third-party packages designed to help work with the command line, then build a real-world example from scratch.

What we’re going to build is a tool for initializing a Git repository. Sure, it’ll run git init under the hood, but it’ll do ...

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