PROMPT [DEPRECATED]

Deprecated, you say?

That's right! For your prompting needs, check out https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-prompt/ instead! If you use npm, I gave the "prompt" name to them, so npm install prompt should do you! If you really need this version, you'll have to do things the "hard" way: Copy prompt.js into your project.

Wait, why?

When I originally wrote prompt I needed something like it for my brainfuck interpreter so the very clever pkrumins helped me hack a prompting library together via a gist. After that I didn't have much of a use for prompting so I let the project languish. I did get some help from eldios, whose efforts I appreciate greatly.

Meanwhile, however, the hackers at Nodejitsu built their library for a core piece of their platform, jitsu. So, not only are these guys good at what they do, but the library is also battle-tested and expected to appreciate steady development over the long-term. Plus, it has a nice API.

So What's This Prompt?:

"Prompt," in this incarnation, was a way to request information from the user while a node.js script is running, on the command line, without invoking a REPL. Many languages have something very simple for this sort of thing built-in--for instance, you may have something like this in an early BASIC-ish program:

r = input( 'Give me a radius: ' );
print( 'Your area is '+ pi*r**2  + '!');

To my surprise, node.js didn't have anything quite like this, though it had the tools (process.openStdin) to make something like it. So, with a lot of help, I did.

A Quick Migration Guide:

As it turns out, Nodejitsu's prompt is already much more powerful than this incarnation. While the API is different, conversion should be relatively painless.

For example, here's an example I wrote using this version of node-prompt:

var Prompt = require('./prompt');

Prompt()
    .ask('What is your name?', 'name')
    .tap(function (vars) {
        console.log('You said: ' + vars.name);
    })
    .ask('What is your quest?', 'quest')
    .tap(function (vars) {
        console.log('You said: ' + vars.quest);
    })
    .ask('What is your favorite color?', 'color')
    .tap(function (vars) {
        console.log('You said: ' + vars.color);
        console.log('Okay, off you go!');
    })
    .end();

Here's a basic rewrite using the new Prompt that (basically) does the same thing:

var prompt = require('prompt').start();

prompt.get({ message: "What is your name?",
             name: 'name' },
           { message: "What is your quest?",
             name: 'quest' },
           { message: "What is your favorite color?",
             name: 'color' }, function(err, res) {
   console.log('So you\'re '+res.name+' and your quest is '+res.quest+' and your favorite color is '+res.color+'?');
   console.log('Okay, off you go!');
});

You may have noticed that instead of intercepting values each time, I just collected all of them at once. If this is a sticking point for you, a strict port is also easy, as you can always .get each variable separately. Oh, and the new prompt is chainable too. Pretty awesome!