Creating Your Own npx Command

Creating a personalized command-line tool can be a fun and efficient way to share your details with others. In this article, I'll walk you through how I created npx devpulkit. Whether you're a developer looking to showcase your portfolio or someone who wants to share their contact details effortlessly, this guide will provide you with the steps and insights needed to build your own npx command. Let's dive in!

I also added this on my portfolio.

Let's Start

To create your own npx command, follow these steps:

1. Set Up Your Project:

   • Create a new directory for your project and navigate into it.
   • Initialize a new Node.js project by running pnpm init. This will create a package.json file.

     {
       "name": "bash-script",
       "version": "1.0.0",
       "main": "cli.js",
       "scripts": {
         "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
       },
       "keywords": [],
       "author": "",
       "license": "ISC",
       "description": ""
     }
     

2. Create the Script:

   Inside your project directory, create a new file named cli.js. Inside the cli.js explain about yourself/ I chose the js object for this

   const info = {
     name: "Pulkit",
     status: "CS student",
     web: "https://pulkitxm.com",
     linkedin: "https://www.linkedin.com/in/pulkitxm",
     gh: "https://github.com/Pulkitxm",
     twitter: "https://twitter.com/devpulkitt",
     desc: "Passionate about web & app development, MERN stack enthusiast, open-source contributor, and ICPC regionalist.",
     skills: {
       langs: ["JavaScript", "TypeScript", "Python"],
       skills: [
         "React",
         "React Native",
         "Node.js",
         "Express.js",
         "MongoDB",
         "Git",
         "Docker",
         "Networking",
       ],
     },
   };
   

   Now you can simply do a console.log().

   console.log(info);
   

   To get those colors, we can do this

   const greenStr = (str) => `\x1b[32m${str}\x1b[32m`;
   

   This functions colorize strings in green using ANSI escape codes. The \x1b[0m at the end of each function resets the color back to default. Now to get the colorful text logged, we can do this

   console.log(greenStr(JSON.stringify(info)));
   

   So, the final code looks like

   console.clear();
   console.log("\n\x1b[36m", "Hi I am Pulkit 👋", "\x1b[0m\n");
   
   const greenStr = (str) => `\x1b[32m${str}\x1b[32m`;
   
   const info = {
     name: "Pulkit",
     status: "CS student",
     web: "https://pulkitxm.com",
     linkedin: "https://www.linkedin.com/in/pulkitxm",
     gh: "https://github.com/Pulkitxm",
     twitter: "https://twitter.com/devpulkitt",
     desc: "Passionate about web & app development, MERN stack enthusiast, open-source contributor, and ICPC regionalist.",
     skills: {
       langs: ["JavaScript", "TypeScript", "Python"],
       skills: [
         "React",
         "React Native",
         "Node.js",
         "Express.js",
         "MongoDB",
         "Git",
         "Docker",
         "Networking",
       ],
     },
   };
   
   console.log(greenStr(JSON.stringify(info, null, 2)));
   

3. Update package.json:

   • Open the package.json file and add a bin field to specify the command name and the script file. It should look something like this:

     {
       "name": "devpulkit",
       "version": "0.1.1",
       "description": "just my intro",
       "main": "cli.js",
       "bin": "cli.js",
       "files": ["cli.js"]
     }
     

   Now you can publish the package to npm using npm publish. Once published, you can test your command by running npx devpulkit in your terminal.

By following these steps, you can create a personalized npx command to share your details effortlessly. I also added this on my portfolio.