A Command Line Interface for Documentation

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1

Hello, all!

I’ve created a CLI for documentation and I’m looking to see if this is something other people would use:

http://cli.elbear.com/

The idea came from Python, where you can see a function’s or class’ docstring in the REPL. You can also see all the members exported by a module among others. I found this very useful and wished it was available for other languages, so I created this web app.

Currently, it only supports a few of the main Elm packages. However, if enough people find the idea useful, I’m planning on expanding it to all Elm packages and to other languages and frameworks.

I would appreciate any kind of feedback. Thanks!

4 Likes
2

Sounds interesting!
Not sure how to use it though. What am I supposed to type at the command line? I tried some module and function names, just got errors.

elm> List

Unknown command List
elm> List.map

Unknown command List.map
elm> 1+1

Unknown command 1+1
elm> Docs list.map

Unknown command Docs list.map
elm> Help list.map

Unknown command Help list.map
elm>

3

Thanks for the feedback, Brian. I should show a starting message.

Commands are in lower case. So it’s help or docs List.map

4

Alternativly/additionally, you could change the ‘unknown command’ message to be something like this:

Unknown command: List.map
Type “help” for available commands

5

https://github.com/eeue56/elm-help/blob/master/README.md have you seen this?

6

I hadn’t seen it, no. From what I can tell, the only advantage of my app would be that you don’t have to install anything. Of course, the disadvantage is that you need an internet connection to use it. Also, it would become more useful once it supported more languages.

1 Like
7

I’ve updated the app based on all the feedback I received so far. I hope that makes it more user friendly.

8

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