node-help

Offline documentation for your Node REPL.

Installing, Uninstalling and Updating node-help

To install node-help, run:

npm install -g node-help

To uninstall node-help, run:

npm uninstall -g node-help

To update node-help to the latest published version, run:

npm update -g node-help

API

• ?: append to the end of a built-in Node object to get documentation on it
• .docs: show a list of long-form markdown articles to read
• .docs <topic>: render the article name in Markdown for the terminal

The offline documentation module for the Node.js REPL

• Features
• Level of Support
• API
• Usage
  • The .docs command
  • The .docs <topic> command
  • The ? token
• Contributions

Features

node-help is a custom Node.js REPL inspired by iPython that lets you append a question mark to any valid JavaScript token to get information about it.

• Documentation for un-aliased built-in lookups, e.g. node-help > process.env?.
• Basic Native JavaScript introspection support displaying objects' valueOf(), toString(), method and property values.
• Colorized short-and-longform documentation
  • short-form docs are accessed with an appended ? and are rendered in colorized plain text
  • long-form docs are accessed via the .docs <topic_name> command and are rendered in colorized markdown in the terminal
• Command history and global context are enabled.

Level of Support

At present documentation is available for Node v8, v9 and 10. Native JavaScript documentation is coming soon, but there is rudimentary introspection for Native JavaScript objects (See the 'additional information' section of the output for any given search query').

Usage

The .docs command

Using the .docs command, you can list the available longform docs like this:

available Node.js docs:
+ addons
+ assert
+ async_hooks
+ buffer
+ child_process
+ cli
+ cluster
+ console
+ crypto
+ debugger
+ deprecations
+ dgram
+ dns
+ documentation
+ domain
+ errors
+ esm
+ events
+ fs
...

The .docs <topic> command

By running .docs http2, for example, you can read long-form documentation on the http2 module from the Node.js website as colorized Markdown in your terminal. Like, wee!

# HTTP/2

    Stability: 1 - Experimental

    The http2 module provides an implementation of the HTTP/2 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7540) protocol. It
    can be accessed using:

        const http2 = require('http2');

        ## Core API

        The Core API provides a low-level interface designed specifically around
        support for HTTP/2 protocol features. It is specifically not designed for
        compatibility with the existing HTTP/1 (http.html) module API. However,
        the Compatibility API (#http2_compatibility_api) is.

        The http2 Core API is much more symmetric between client and server than the
        http API. For instance, most events, like error, connect and stream, can
        be emitted either by client-side code or server-side code.

        ### Server-side example

        The following illustrates a simple HTTP/2 server using the Core API.
        Since there are no browsers known that support
        unencrypted HTTP/2 (https://http2.github.io/faq/#does-http2-require-encryption), the use of
        http2.createSecureServer() (#http2_http2_createsecureserver_options_onrequesthandler) is necessary when communicating
        with browser clients.

            const http2 = require('http2');
                const fs = require('fs');

...

Use the ? to search the Node API (shorter-form)

node-help > process?

[ 2 Result(s) for Node.js. ]

 global | process 
Name: process
Node.js Object Type: global
Signature(s): process 

Description:
{Object}

The process object. See the process object section.

 ChildProcess | process 
Name: process
Node.js Object Type: ChildProcess
Signature(s): `process` {ChildProcess}  

Description:
All workers are created using child_process.fork(), the returned object
from this function is stored as .process. In a worker, the global process
is stored.
See: Child Process module
Note that workers will call process.exit(0) if the 'disconnect' event occurs
on process and .exitedAfterDisconnect is not true. This protects against
accidental disconnection.

[ Additional Information ]

toString: '[object process]'
valueOf: '[object process]'
Constructor: process
local properties (non-methods):

_events        arch           debugPort      execPath       pid            stderr         version        
_eventsCount   argv           domain         features       platform       stdin          versions       
_exiting       argv0          env            mainModule     ppid           stdout         
_maxListeners  config         execArgv       moduleLoadList release        title          

local methods:
_debugEnd                           binding                             initgroups                          
_debugPause                         chdir                               kill                                
_debugProcess                       cpuUsage                            memoryUsage                         
_fatalException                     cwd                                 nextTick                            
_getActiveHandles                   dlopen                              openStdin                           
_getActiveRequests                  emitWarning                         reallyExit                          
_kill                               exit                                setUncaughtExceptionCaptureCallback 
_linkedBinding                      getegid                             setegid                             
_rawDebug                           geteuid                             seteuid                             
_startProfilerIdleNotifier          getgid                              setgid                              
_stopProfilerIdleNotifier           getgroups                           setgroups                           
_tickCallback                       getuid                              setuid                              
abort                               hasUncaughtExceptionCaptureCallback umask                               
assert                              hrtime                              uptime                              

node-help >

Contributions

See Contributing. The search algorithm for node-help is not perfect so there will be bugs. Please feel free to raise issues on the github issues page.