1# Cobra Generator 2 3Cobra provides its own program that will create your application and add any 4commands you want. It's the easiest way to incorporate Cobra into your application. 5 6In order to use the cobra command, compile it using the following command: 7 8 go get github.com/spf13/cobra/cobra 9 10This will create the cobra executable under your `$GOPATH/bin` directory. 11 12### cobra init 13 14The `cobra init [app]` command will create your initial application code 15for you. It is a very powerful application that will populate your program with 16the right structure so you can immediately enjoy all the benefits of Cobra. It 17will also automatically apply the license you specify to your application. 18 19Cobra init is pretty smart. You can either run it in your current application directory 20or you can specify a relative path to an existing project. If the directory does not exist, it will be created for you. 21 22Updates to the Cobra generator have now decoupled it from the GOPATH. 23As such `--pkg-name` is required. 24 25**Note:** init will no longer fail on non-empty directories. 26 27``` 28mkdir -p newApp && cd newApp 29cobra init --pkg-name github.com/spf13/newApp 30``` 31 32or 33 34``` 35cobra init --pkg-name github.com/spf13/newApp path/to/newApp 36``` 37 38### cobra add 39 40Once an application is initialized, Cobra can create additional commands for you. 41Let's say you created an app and you wanted the following commands for it: 42 43* app serve 44* app config 45* app config create 46 47In your project directory (where your main.go file is) you would run the following: 48 49``` 50cobra add serve 51cobra add config 52cobra add create -p 'configCmd' 53``` 54 55*Note: Use camelCase (not snake_case/kebab-case) for command names. 56Otherwise, you will encounter errors. 57For example, `cobra add add-user` is incorrect, but `cobra add addUser` is valid.* 58 59Once you have run these three commands you would have an app structure similar to 60the following: 61 62``` 63 ▾ app/ 64 ▾ cmd/ 65 serve.go 66 config.go 67 create.go 68 main.go 69``` 70 71At this point you can run `go run main.go` and it would run your app. `go run 72main.go serve`, `go run main.go config`, `go run main.go config create` along 73with `go run main.go help serve`, etc. would all work. 74 75Obviously you haven't added your own code to these yet. The commands are ready 76for you to give them their tasks. Have fun! 77 78### Configuring the cobra generator 79 80The Cobra generator will be easier to use if you provide a simple configuration 81file which will help you eliminate providing a bunch of repeated information in 82flags over and over. 83 84An example ~/.cobra.yaml file: 85 86```yaml 87author: Steve Francia <spf@spf13.com> 88license: MIT 89``` 90 91You can also use built-in licenses. For example, **GPLv2**, **GPLv3**, **LGPL**, 92**AGPL**, **MIT**, **2-Clause BSD** or **3-Clause BSD**. 93 94You can specify no license by setting `license` to `none` or you can specify 95a custom license: 96 97```yaml 98author: Steve Francia <spf@spf13.com> 99year: 2020 100license: 101 header: This file is part of CLI application foo. 102 text: | 103 {{ .copyright }} 104 105 This is my license. There are many like it, but this one is mine. 106 My license is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must 107 master my life. 108``` 109 110In the above custom license configuration the `copyright` line in the License 111text is generated from the `author` and `year` properties. The content of the 112`LICENSE` file is 113 114``` 115Copyright © 2020 Steve Francia <spf@spf13.com> 116 117This is my license. There are many like it, but this one is mine. 118My license is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must 119master my life. 120``` 121 122The `header` property is used as the license header files. No interpolation is 123done. This is the example of the go file header. 124``` 125/* 126Copyright © 2020 Steve Francia <spf@spf13.com> 127This file is part of CLI application foo. 128*/ 129``` 130