Yargs: Syntax for passing multiple arguments of the same key?

[steveharman]

Assuming I wanted to create an 'apples' object containing all apple colours passed to it from the command line. Could be two colours, could be five colours... I seem to be able to do that with

node ./myscript.js --apples=red --apples=green --apples=yellow

Which successfully constructs:

{ _: [],
  apples: [ 'red', 'green', 'yellow' ],
  '$0': 'myscript.js' }

But is there a more succinct way to specify that the 'apples' key should construct its object using multiple arguments from the command line _without_ repeating the --apples key for each colour?

I wondered if --apples=Red,Green,Yellow might do the trick but perhaps understandably that takes 'Red,Green,Yellow' as a single string. Tried it with various ideas around spaces too, but that didn't seem to help either.

Thanks,

Steve

[nexdrew]

@steveharman You can tell yargs that apples should be an array, like this:

var argv = require('yargs')
  .option('apples', {
    type: 'array',
    desc: 'One or more apple types/colors'
  })
  .argv
console.log(argv)

$ node issue686.js --apples red green yellow
{ _: [],
  apples: [ 'red', 'green', 'yellow' ],
  '$0': 'issue686.js' }

Is this similar to what you're looking for?

[steveharman]

That, Andrew is not _similar_ to what I need, it's precisely what I need. Fantastic - thanks for the tip.

Steve

[nexdrew]

@steveharman Excellent! Let us know if you encounter any problems. Thanks for using yargs!

[nexdrew]

@steveharman I should note that you can also use coercion to do your own custom value parsing too, e.g. if you wanted to support a syntax like --apples red,green,yellow.