SmartCon

A small collection of console tools for .NET.

Processing of commandline arguments

You can use SmartCon to handle commandline arguments of console apps. There's no neet to parse the arguments, check fo a trailing dash etc.

Basic Example:

using SmartCon;
  
private static void Main(string[] args)
{
    var handler = new ArgumentProcessor();
    handler.RegisterArgument("h", (v) => GetHelp());
    handler.RegisterArgument("f", (v) => SetFilename(v));
    handler.RegisterPostProcessor(DoWork);
    handler.Process(args);
}
  
private static void DoWork()
{
    // ...
}
  
private static void GetHelp()
{ 
    // ...
}
  
private static void SetFilename(string filename)
{
    // ...
}

The previous example will give you a console app, which accepts the commandline arguments -h and -f. Parameters are specified with an equal-sign, for example -f=myfile.txt.

Different flavours of commandlines

Choosing the commandline flavour

You can change the commandline style by setting the CommandlineDescription property:

var handler = new ArgumentProcessor();
handler.CommandLineDescription = CommandLineDescription.CmdStyle;

SmartCon defines the following styles:

Default style

Arguments are prefixed with a dash, parameters are separated by an equal-sign:

-f=myfile.txt

var handler = new ArgumentProcessor();
handler.CommandLineDescription = CommandLineDescription.DefaultCommandLine;

DotNet-Style

Arguments are prefixed with a dash, parameters are separated by a colon:

-f:myfile.txt

var handler = new ArgumentProcessor();
handler.CommandLineDescription = CommandLineDescription.DotNetStyle;

CMD-Style

Arguments are prefixed with a forward-slash, parameters are separated by a space:

/f myfile.txt

var handler = new ArgumentProcessor();
handler.CommandLineDescription = CommandLineDescription.CmdStyle;

GNU-Style

Arguments are prefixed with two dashes, parameters are separated by an equal-sign:

--f=myfile.txt

var handler = new ArgumentProcessor();
handler.CommandLineDescription = CommandLineDescription.GnuStyle;

NPM-Style

SmartCon can also be set up to understand a command line style like npm. For example "npm adduser --registry=url" or "npm install package1 package2".

For a complete example see https://github.com/kenareb/SmartCon/tree/master/DemoNPM

Defining Commandline Help

SmartCon offers two possibilities of defining data for the commandline help.

Define help in the App.config file.

Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="Help" type="SmartCon.Help.HelpSection, SmartCon" />
  </configSections>
  <startup>
    <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.6.1" />
  </startup>
  <Help>
    <Commands>
      <add key="f" arg="filename" description="Looks for the given file." />
      <add key="h" description="Shows this help page." />
    </Commands>
  </Help>
</configuration>

To read the data from the App.Config use the following code:

class Program
{
	private static SmartConsole _console = new SmartConsole();

	private static void Main(string[] args)
	{
		var handler = new ArgumentProcessor();
		handler.RegisterArgument("h", (v) => GetHelp());
		handler.RegisterArgument("f", (v) => SetFilename(v));
		handler.Process(args);
	}

	private static void GetHelp()
	{
		var hp = new ArgumentHelpProvider();
		var help = hp.GetDocumentation();

		_console.WriteLine();
		_console.WriteLine(help);

		Environment.Exit(0);
	}

	// ...
}

This will produce the following output:

C:\> .\Demo.exe -h

Usage: Demo -f=filename  -h

-f=filename
    Looks for the given file.

-h
    Shows this help page.

Define help with class attributes

To define the help with attributes use the following code:

[Documentation(Key = "h", Description = "Shows this help page.")]
[Documentation(Key = "f", ArgumentExample = "filename", Description = "Looks for the given file.")]
class Program
{
	private static SmartConsole _console = new SmartConsole();

	private static void Main(string[] args)
	{
		var handler = new ArgumentProcessor();
		handler.RegisterArgument("h", (v) => GetHelp());
		handler.RegisterArgument("f", (v) => SetFilename(v));
		handler.Process(args);
	}

	private static void GetHelp()
	{
		var hp = new ArgumentHelpProvider(typeof(Program));
		var help = hp.GetDocumentation();

		_console.WriteLine();
		_console.WriteLine(help);

		Environment.Exit(0);
	}

	// ...
}

This will produce the following output:

C:\> .\Demo.exe -h

Usage: Demo -f=filename  -h

-f=filename
    Looks for the given file.

-h
    Shows this help page.

Furhter description of how to process command line switches and how to set up command line help can be found on my blog posts SmartCon Part-1 and SmartCon Part-2.