commander-pkg-meta

A lightweight and robust utility to extract and validate essential metadata from package.json properties.

Description

This package provides a simple function, getMetaData, to reliably extract a package's name, version, and description. It intelligently determines the package name from either the bin or name field in your package.json and ensures the version is a valid semantic version. It provides sensible defaults and console warnings for invalid inputs, making it a dependable tool for CLI applications and build scripts.

Key Features

• Intelligent Name Resolution: Automatically selects the best name from package.json bin or name fields. It prioritizes the bin field:
  • If bin is a string, its trimmed value is used.
  • If bin is an object, the trimmed value of its first key is used.
  • If bin is not available or usable, it falls back to the name field.
• Semantic Version Validation: Uses semver to validate and clean version strings.
• Graceful Fallbacks: Provides sensible default values for missing or invalid fields.
• Developer Warnings: Logs helpful warnings to the console when input data is invalid, preventing silent failures.
• Zero Dependencies: Aside from semver, this utility is lightweight and dependency-free.

Installation

npm install commander-pkg-meta

Usage

Simply import the getMetaData function and pass it an object containing properties from your package.json.

const { getMetaData } = require('commander-pkg-meta');
const pkg = require('./package.json');

const metadata = getMetaData({
  name: pkg.name,
  bin: pkg.bin,
  version: pkg.version,
  description: pkg.description,
});

console.log(metadata);
// Example Output:
// {
//   name: 'my-cli-tool',
//   version: '1.2.3',
//   description: 'A cool command-line tool.'
// }

Integration with Commander.js

const { getMetaData } = require('commander-pkg-meta');
const { Command } = require('commander');

try {
  const pkg = require('./package.json');
  const metaData = getMetaData(pkg);

  // program's name, version, and description match those in package.json
  const program = new Command();
  program.name(metaData.name).version(metaData.version).description(metadata.description);

  // ...
} catch (error) {
  console.error(error);
}

API Reference

getMetaData(props)

Extracts and validates metadata from package.json properties.

Parameters:

• props (Object): An object containing properties, typically from a package.json file.
  • props.name (string, optional): The package name.
  • props.bin (string | object, optional): The bin field. The name is often derived from this for CLI tools.
  • props.version (string, optional): The package version string.
  • props.description (string, optional): The package description.

Returns:

• (Object): An object containing the extracted metadata with fallbacks applied.
  • name (string): The resolved package name.
  • version (string): The cleaned semantic version.
  • description (string): The package description.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read our contributing guidelines to get started.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.