I love developing in NodeJS; I've written a few Express applications, but a lot of the work I do is in building command-line utilities that you'll find listed here. In the old days, you'd write batch files (Windows) or shell scripts (linux, macOS) when you encounter something you want to automate. With all of the web development tooling moving to the command-line, node is the most common way of building interactive utilities. When I find an interesting problem I think I can solve with a little utility, I write it and share it with the world through the repositories you see below. This page contains links to 20 repositories.
If you find any of these projects useful or helpful, please consider buying me a coffee.
A command-line utility for web sites using Algolia (for site indexing and search) to merge an updated index with an Algolia project data source.
The Apache Cordova CLI includes the create command that enables developers to quickly create a new project. This is my replacement for that command. After using the Cordova CLI command for many months, I realized that there were a whole suite of commands I executed every time I created a new project. I decided to make a simple node module that creates a simple Cordova project with a all of my default plugins and platforms. The module is configurable via a configuration file which is automatically created the first time the command runs.
Apache Cordova Make Hooks Folders Module
The Apache Cordova CLI enables developers to execute external commands during the build process. This has changed over time, but when I created this module, developers enabled this feature by adding their executables to different project folders depending on when they wanted the tasks to run. This silly little node command automated the creation of the Cordova Hooks folders.
Apache Cordova Make Merges Folders Module
The Apache Cordova CLI enables developers to insert different versions of files into an application based on the target platform. You do this though the creation of a set of folders in your project and put the platform-specific files in the appropriate folder. This silly little node command automates the creation of the Cordova merges folders for each platform currently included in the project.
I was playing around with the Box API, and created this simple node command line module to exercise the Box Long Poll API.
A simple command-line utility that creates a batch of new posts for an Eleventy site.
A simple command-line utility that creates a new post for an Eleventy site from a template.
The Joomla! to Markdown (j2md) module is a node.js command line utility for converting Joomla 3 article content into markdown files. I needed to migrate an old Joomla 3 site to another platform and wrote this module to handle the heavy lifting for me. I wanted to use something like Jekyll or Eleventy for my site and knew that both supported markdown files.
Firebase Functions Deployment Helper Module
I did a lot of Firebase Functions development in early 2021 and regularly bumped up against Functions deployment quotas. To get around them, I built this simple CLI that simplifies deployment of a subset of a project's Firebase Functions. This module delivers an easy way to deploy parts of your functions catalog with a few simple commands.
As I started working in Flutter, a book I read showed me how to create a simple Flutter project folder structure to help me organize my code. I liked that idea, and with a few tweaks that fit my coding style, I built a CLI that automates the process of creating my default project structure.
Command line utility for npm-based packages that generates a simple buildinfo.json file in a specified folder with the expectation that the application in the project folder reads the file and displays the contents somehow within the application.
This one's a weird one. A friend of mine wanted an easy way to update and send a pre-configured calendar invite, so I created a simple Node module to update an existing `.ics` file and launching it in the default calendar application.
Ignore Visual Studio Code Files Module
When I first started using Visual Studio Code, I noticed that the editor created `.vscode` folder in the project where it stored its internal files. Recognizing that I didn't always need this folder propogating around on my different systems, I created this simple Node module that updates a folder's .gitignore file to ignore that folder.
Ionic Build Information Module
I was working in an Ionic project and realized that I wanted to write the app's build details the the console at startup but couldn't figure out the most efficient way. After doing some research I realized that the solution I needed didn't exist, so I created one. When you run this utility in an Ionic project folder, it updates a build info module in the project. The app can then import the module and use data in it to write build number and build date information to the console.
Jekyll Template File Copy Module
When I began building Jekyll-based sites more frequently, the Jekyll team had just moved their template files from the current project to a shared location on the development system. To modify the files, you had to find the template files and copy the ones you wanted to modify to the same folders in your Jekyll project folder. I created this CLI to simplify the process of identifying the template folder location, listing the available template files, and copying the template files to the current Jekyll project folder.
This is a variant of the make-reamdme module. A silly and stupid module for creating .md files. This is easily superseded by the existing `touch` command available in most modern operating systems.
When I first encountered Markdown and .md files, I started looking for an easy way to create a project's readme file. This project is a Node module that creates a 'blank' readme file in the current folder with the project folder's name as the Heading 1 level in the file. It's a really silly and useless module, something you can do easily today with the `touch` command available on Linux and macOS. I didn't have this on Windows, so that's why I created this; I've since figured out how to do this on Windows with the 'touch' command.
I think the Moddable platform is pretty interesting, but the platform tooling is very command-line heavy and I noticed that there were some ways to simplify the process of building and deploying code to devices. To help with this, I created this module which adds a `mddbl` command wrapper around some of the Moddable SDK commands.
ReactJS Build Information Module
I was working in an React JS project and realized that I wanted to write the app's build details the the console at startup but couldn't figure out the most efficient way. After doing some research I realized that the solution I needed didn't exist, so I created one. When you run this utility in a ReactJS project folder, it updates a build info module in the project. The app can then import the module and use data in it to write build number and build date information to the console.
A command-line utility for adding or modifying a YAML front matter property in all files in a particular directory (and all subdirectories therein). Created to enable batch updates of content files with YAML front matter.