Commander.js: Global Options

[alex-phillips]

Is there a way to add global options to a program that is applied to all commands? I'm trying to be able to define a single verbose and quiet flag that is applied not only to the program but to all commands added as well.

I can post sample code if necessary, but I think it's fairly self-explanatory.

[leesei]

It works as is:

Program
  .version(Pkg.version)
  .description(Pkg.description)
  .options('-v, --verbose', 'be verbose')
  .option('-q, --quiet', 'be quiet')

Program
  .command('search <query>')
  .description('do search')
  .option('-r, --regex', 'use regex')
  .action(function search (query, options) {
    // Program.quite
    // Program.verbose
    // options.regex
  });

[donaldpipowitch]

Can I write a default action for an option? It is quite nice that I can create a "global option" which is passed to every command, but if I have many commands I don't want to call loggingFramework.setLogLevel(options.quite) everywhere.

I can't do commander.parse(process.argv); commander.opts();, because then the commands action is called _before_ I can do something with opts. But it looks I need to call parse before I can use options correctly.

And it looks like these global options aren't shown in the --help output of a command.

[thetutlage]

@donaldpipowitch Going through the source code and found this line. https://github.com/tj/commander.js/blob/master/index.js#L393

It seems to be possible as

Program.on('verbose', function () {
  process.env.VERBOSE = this.verbose
})

Program.on('quiet', function () {
  process.env.QUIET = this.quiet
})

Also for options that accept values, the value is passed to the callback function. For example

Program.on('env', function (env) {
  process.env.NODE_ENV = env
})

some-command --env=production

[donaldpipowitch]

Cool, thanks.

[bencao]

In addition to @donaldpipowitch's comment, in order to listen on the option event, we could use:

  .option("--disable-tty", "disable tty")
  .on("option:disable-tty", function() {
    // do something here
  })

[shadowspawn]

The original question got answered, and I don't think there will be action due to the subsequent comments.

Feel free to open a new issue if it comes up again, with new information and renewed interest.

Thank you for your contributions.