hpohlmeyer / inquirer.js

A collection of common interactive command line user interfaces.

Inquirer

A collection of common interactive command line user interfaces.

Give it a try in your own terminal!

npx @inquirer/demo@latest

Installation

npm install @inquirer/prompts

yarn add @inquirer/prompts

Inquirer recently underwent a rewrite from the ground up to reduce the package size and improve performance. The previous version of the package is still maintained (though not actively developed), and offered hundreds of community contributed prompts that might not have been migrated to the latest API. If this is what you're looking for, the previous package is over here.

Usage

import { input } from '@inquirer/prompts';

const answer = await input({ message: 'Enter your name' });

Prompts

Input

import { input } from '@inquirer/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Select

import { select } from '@inquirer/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Checkbox

import { checkbox } from '@inquirer/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Confirm

import { confirm } from '@inquirer/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Password

import { password } from '@inquirer/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Expand

import { expand } from '@inquirer/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Editor

Launches an instance of the users preferred editor on a temporary file. Once the user exits their editor, the content of the temporary file is read as the answer. The editor used is determined by reading the $VISUAL or $EDITOR environment variables. If neither of those are present, the OS default is used (notepad on Windows, vim on Mac or Linux.)

import { editor } from '@inquirer/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Raw List

import { rawlist } from '@inquirer/prompts';

See documentation for usage example and options documentation.

Create your own prompts

The API documentation is over here, and our testing utilities here.

Advanced usage

All inquirer prompts are a function taking 2 arguments. The first argument is the prompt configuration (unique to each prompt). The second is providing contextual or runtime configuration.

The context options are:

Property	Type	Required	Description
input	NodeJS.ReadableStream	no	The stdin stream (defaults to process.stdin)
output	NodeJS.WritableStream	no	The stdout stream (defaults to process.stdout)
clearPromptOnDone	boolean	no	If true, we'll clear the screen after the prompt is answered

Example:

import { confirm } from '@inquirer/prompts';

const allowEmail = await confirm(
  { message: 'Do you allow us to send you email?' },
  {
    output: new Stream.Writable({
      write(chunk, _encoding, next) {
        // Do something
        next();
      },
    }),
    clearPromptOnDone: true,
  },
);

Canceling prompt

All prompt functions are returning a cancelable promise. This special promise type has a cancel method that'll cancel and cleanup the prompt.

On calling cancel, the answer promise will become rejected.

import { confirm } from '@inquirer/prompts';

const answer = confirm(...); // note: for this you cannot use `await`

answer.cancel();

Recipes

Get answers in an object

When asking many questions, you might not want to keep one variable per answer everywhere. In which case, you can put the answer inside an object.

import { input, confirm } from '@inquirer/prompts';

const answers = {
  firstName: await input({ message: "What's your first name?" }),
  allowEmail: await confirm({ message: 'Do you allow us to send you email?' }),
};

console.log(answers.firstName);

Ask a question conditionally

Maybe some questions depend on some other question's answer.

import { input, confirm } from '@inquirer/prompts';

const allowEmail = await confirm({ message: 'Do you allow us to send you email?' });

let email;
if (allowEmail) {
  email = await input({ message: 'What is your email address' });
}

Get default value after timeout

import { setTimeout } from 'node:timers/promises';
import { input } from '@inquirer/prompts';

const answer = input(...);

const defaultValue = setTimeout(5000).then(() => {
  answer.cancel();
  return 'default answer';
});

const answer = await Promise.race([defaultValue, answer])

Using as pre-commit/git hooks, or scripts

By default scripts ran from tools like husky/lint-staged might not run inside an interactive shell. In non-interactive shell, Inquirer cannot run, and users cannot send keypress events to the process.

For it to work, you must make sure you start a tty (or "interactive" input stream.)

If those scripts are set within your package.json, you can define the stream like so:

  "precommit": "my-script < /dev/tty"

Or if in a shell script file, you'll do it like so: (on Windows that's likely your only option)

#!/bin/sh
exec < /dev/tty

node my-script.js

Community prompts

If you created a cool prompt, send us a PR adding it to the list below!

Interactive List Prompt
Select a choice either with arrow keys + Enter or by pressing a key associated with a choice.

? Choose an option:
>   Run command (D)
    Quit (Q)

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Simon Boudrias (twitter: @vaxilart)
Licensed under the MIT license.