TIPS.md

Tips

• Command-line usage
• Menu and item definition
• Exec
• Published patterns

Command-line usage

Implicitly load the current directory's hotshell, ./hs.js, or if not found, the system-wide hotshell ~/.hs/hs.js

hs

Specify the path to the definition file

hs -f ~/projects/web/hs.js

Generate a markdown documentation of your menus, example

hs --generate-md > COMMANDS.md  

Load a menu remotely (does not work when using modules)

H='raw.githubusercontent.com/julienmoumne/hotshell/v0.1.0/hs.js'; T=`mktemp`; wget $H -qO $T && hs -f $T; rm $T

Use aliases

# user hotshell
alias hs-home="hs -f ~/.hs/hs.js"

# project hotshell
alias hs-someproject="cd ~/work/someproject; hs"

Generate an interactive HTML demo of your menus, example

hs --generate-demo -f ~/projects/web/hs.js > hotshell-web-demo.html  

Menu and item definition

Output the definition objects to help debugging :

var hotshell = require('hotshell')
var item = hotshell.item

function log(val) { console.log(JSON.stringify(val, null, ' ')) }

item({desc: 'debug'}, function () {
  item({key: 'r', desc: 'restart apache', cmd: 'sudo service apache2 restart'})
  // 'current' contains the item currently built
  // in this case the root menu named 'debug' with only one item so far
  log(hotshell.current)
  item({key: 'a', desc: 'access.log', cmd: 'less +F /var/log/apache2/access.log'})
}) 

// 'items' contains the whole definition
log(hotshell.items)

displays

{
 "desc": "debug",
 "items": [
  {
   "cmd": "sudo service apache2 restart",
   "desc": "restart apache",
   "key": "r",
   "wd": "./"
  }
 ],
 "wd": "./"
}
[
 {
  "desc": "debug",
  "items": [
   {
    "cmd": "sudo service apache2 restart",
    "desc": "restart apache",
    "key": "r",
    "wd": "./"
   },
   {
    "cmd": "less +F /var/log/apache2/access.log",
    "desc": "access.log",
    "key": "a",
    "wd": "./"
   }
  ],
  "wd": "./"
 }
]

Commands can receive inputs from the user with bash builtin read

item({key: 'p', desc: 'check local port', cmd:
    'echo -n "[port] "; ' + // prompt for port number
    'read p; ' + // read port number and assign it to variable 'p'
    'cat < /dev/tcp/127.0.0.1/$p' // check if port 'p' is opened locally
})

item({key: 'f', desc: 'find text in files', cmd:
    'echo -n "[location] [pattern] "; ' + // prompt for location and pattern
    'read l p; ' + // read location and pattern into variables 'l' and 'p'
    'grep -rnws $l -e $p' // search for pattern 'p' traversing files rooted at 'l'
})

Use this pattern with less effort by importing Hotshell Util.

Enter other interactive applications

item({key: 's', cmd: 'ssh remote-server'})
item({key: 'h', cmd: 'sudo vim /etc/hosts'})

Call scripts

item({key: 'b', desc: 'bash script', cmd: './script.sh'})
item({key: 'p', desc: 'python script', cmd: './script.py'})

When running out of characters for defining hot keys

// use capital letters and unicode characters
item({key: 'S', cmd: 'ssh remote-server'})
item({key: 'Ô', cmd: 'ssh remote-server'})

// or group commands in submenus
item({key: 'g', desc: 'group of related commands'}, function () {

  // the complete alphabet is available
  item({key: 'a', cmd: 'echo a'})
  item({key: 'b', cmd: 'echo b'})
})

Retrieve variables from a file

item({key: 'o', cmd: 'source ./variables && open $WEBSITE_URL'})

# file ./variables
WEBSITE_URL=http://julienmoumne.github.io/hotshell

Factor groups of commands

See network example

Modularize menu definitions

See modules example

Import JSON data

var data = require('./data.json')

Nest Hotshells

See nested hotshells

There is a good number of command examples in

• the default hotshell hs --default
• the examples directory

Need to understand how the DSL is interpreted?

see Building Trees using a JavaScript DSL

Exec

Retrieve environment variables

var exec = require('hotshell').exec

var httpPort = exec('echo $HTTP_PORT'); if (httpPort == '') throw 'please set $HTTP_PORT'

item({key: 's', desc: 'start http server', cmd: 'python -m SimpleHTTPServer ' + httpPort})

Conditionally set-up items based on the result of system commands

var exec = require('hotshell').exec

var linux = exec('uname').indexOf('Linux') > -1

item({key: 'u', desc: 'update', cmd: linux ? 'sudo apt-get update' : 'brew update'})

Dynamically create menus

var exec = require('hotshell').exec

var recentlyUpdatedLogs = exec('ls -dt /var/log/*.* | head -n 3').split('\n')

_(recentlyUpdatedLogs).each(function(el, ix) {
  item({key: ix, desc: 'less ' + el, cmd: 'less +F ' + el})
})

'console.log()' can be used to help debugging

var exec = require('hotshell').exec

console.log(exec('echo $(date)'))

Published patterns

Some patterns are published in separate projects and can easily be integrated in your menus using npm, e.g :

• hotshell-util
• hotshell-docker