Vantage.js: A new take on interactive CLI for Node | Hacker News Reader

Vantage.js: A new take on interactive CLI for Node

github.com

187 pointsdc214 comments

Some ideas: it would be nice if you could run it inside a web browser. You could print data-structures, and like in the developer console, you could navigate through data-structures by unfolding them. You could also do console.log(image), and the image would appear inside the browser. Or you could type "admin()", and a menu with buttons would appear below the command prompt. Etcetera...

(Just thinking out loud).

Definitely good ideas, but there's some tools that do similar things, and I wouldn't want to tread on the other libraries' boots. I forget the name, but one popular library creates a web server where you can open chrome web tools and do profiling on the fly, which is awesome.

Vantage.js is entirely based on TTY controls, so it wouldn't really work too well in a browser.

You really should check out Figwheel.

Interesting and strong app, I'm wondering what's the best use for this ? deployment like gulp/grunt ? ordinary devops tasks like app management and backups ?

Thanks!

It can take on several roles. I think the most prominent are devops / debugging live apps. It gives you a bit more leeway than having to just rely on what you logged before you deployed the app. If you are missing data, it can let you jump into a remote REPL and find out more.

Another one is helping while you are developing an app - you can call functions you are working on and play around with application state. That's why I originally put it together for myself.

But I'm sure others can think of even more inventive uses - that's why I made it extensible so others smarter than me can write plugins.

Also great for debugging and maybe even profiling.

Cool to see more REPL love in node land. The Rails console / tools like pry always were some of the bigger selling points for Ruby / Rails to me. I do wonder if node.js will eventually become or maybe even already is the new PHP/Ruby/Rails all rolled into one ;)

Thanks - yeah, that would be pretty cool.

Nice. I love the idea to REPL to a live node application.

But I would be a little afraid to use it in production though, if there's a security breach the attacker could just pretty much do anything.

I've been waiting for something like this, it looks great! I hope it can work with "babel-node" without any hiccups, so I can keep my server on ES6.

I think I had one user try it out, and after fixing one thing it was working fine. ESLint was used to lint it pretty thoroughly, so check it out.

I was thinking if this is like a Putty-on-the-web kinda thing with Terminal UI embedded. That would be nice. But I guess it's not what I thought.

Great stuff, been playing with it all day, this will be really useful!

That's great! Happy you're finding it useful.

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