While you are welcome to provide your own organization, typically a Cobra-based
application will follow the following organizational structure:
```
▾ appName/
▾ cmd/
add.go
your.go
commands.go
here.go
main.go
```
In a Cobra app, typically the main.go file is very bare. It serves one purpose: initializing Cobra.
```go
package main
import (
"{pathToYourApp}/cmd"
)
func main() {
cmd.Execute()
}
```
## Using the Cobra Generator
Cobra-CLI is its own program that will create your application and add any
commands you want. It's the easiest way to incorporate Cobra into your application.
For complete details on using the Cobra generator, please refer to [The Cobra-CLI Generator README](https://github.com/spf13/cobra-cli/blob/main/README.md)
## Using the Cobra Library
To manually implement Cobra you need to create a bare main.go file and a rootCmd file.
You will optionally provide additional commands as you see fit.
### Create rootCmd
Cobra doesn't require any special constructors. Simply create your commands.
Ideally you place this in app/cmd/root.go:
```go
var rootCmd = &cobra.Command{
Use: "hugo",
Short: "Hugo is a very fast static site generator",
Long: `A Fast and Flexible Static Site Generator built with
love by spf13 and friends in Go.
Complete documentation is available at https://gohugo.io/documentation/`,
Run: func(cmd *cobra.Command, args []string) {
// Do Stuff Here
},
}
func Execute() {
if err := rootCmd.Execute(); err != nil {
fmt.Fprintln(os.Stderr, err)
os.Exit(1)
}
}
```
You will additionally define flags and handle configuration in your init() function.
For example cmd/root.go:
```go
package cmd
import (
"fmt"
"os"
"github.com/spf13/cobra"
"github.com/spf13/viper"
)
var (
// Used for flags.
cfgFile string
userLicense string
rootCmd = &cobra.Command{
Use: "cobra-cli",
Short: "A generator for Cobra based Applications",
Long: `Cobra is a CLI library for Go that empowers applications.
This application is a tool to generate the needed files
to quickly create a Cobra application.`,
}
)
// Execute executes the root command.
func Execute() error {
return rootCmd.Execute()
}
func init() {
cobra.OnInitialize(initConfig)
rootCmd.PersistentFlags().StringVar(&cfgFile, "config", "", "config file (default is $HOME/.cobra.yaml)")
rootCmd.PersistentFlags().StringP("author", "a", "YOUR NAME", "author name for copyright attribution")
rootCmd.PersistentFlags().StringVarP(&userLicense, "license", "l", "", "name of license for the project")
rootCmd.PersistentFlags().Bool("viper", true, "use Viper for configuration")
If you have different flags that must be provided together (e.g. if they provide the `--username` flag they MUST provide the `--password` flag as well) then
-`NoArgs` - report an error if there are any positional args.
-`ArbitraryArgs` - accept any number of args.
-`MinimumNArgs(int)` - report an error if less than N positional args are provided.
-`MaximumNArgs(int)` - report an error if more than N positional args are provided.
-`ExactArgs(int)` - report an error if there are not exactly N positional args.
-`RangeArgs(min, max)` - report an error if the number of args is not between `min` and `max`.
- Content of the arguments:
-`OnlyValidArgs` - report an error if there are any positional args not specified in the `ValidArgs` field of `Command`, which can optionally be set to a list of valid values for positional args.
Use "cobra [command] --help" for more information about a command.
### Defining your own usage
You can provide your own usage function or template for Cobra to use.
Like help, the function and template are overridable through public methods:
```go
cmd.SetUsageFunc(f func(*Command) error)
cmd.SetUsageTemplate(s string)
```
## Version Flag
Cobra adds a top-level '--version' flag if the Version field is set on the root command.
Running an application with the '--version' flag will print the version to stdout using
the version template. The template can be customized using the
`cmd.SetVersionTemplate(s string)` function.
## PreRun and PostRun Hooks
It is possible to run functions before or after the main `Run` function of your command. The `PersistentPreRun` and `PreRun` functions will be executed before `Run`. `PersistentPostRun` and `PostRun` will be executed after `Run`. The `Persistent*Run` functions will be inherited by children if they do not declare their own. These functions are run in the following order:
-`PersistentPreRun`
-`PreRun`
-`Run`
-`PostRun`
-`PersistentPostRun`
An example of two commands which use all of these features is below. When the subcommand is executed, it will run the root command's `PersistentPreRun` but not the root command's `PersistentPostRun`:
fmt.Printf("Inside subCmd PersistentPostRun with args: %v\n", args)
},
}
rootCmd.AddCommand(subCmd)
rootCmd.SetArgs([]string{""})
rootCmd.Execute()
fmt.Println()
rootCmd.SetArgs([]string{"sub", "arg1", "arg2"})
rootCmd.Execute()
}
```
Output:
```
Inside rootCmd PersistentPreRun with args: []
Inside rootCmd PreRun with args: []
Inside rootCmd Run with args: []
Inside rootCmd PostRun with args: []
Inside rootCmd PersistentPostRun with args: []
Inside rootCmd PersistentPreRun with args: [arg1 arg2]
Inside subCmd PreRun with args: [arg1 arg2]
Inside subCmd Run with args: [arg1 arg2]
Inside subCmd PostRun with args: [arg1 arg2]
Inside subCmd PersistentPostRun with args: [arg1 arg2]
```
## Suggestions when "unknown command" happens
Cobra will print automatic suggestions when "unknown command" errors happen. This allows Cobra to behave similarly to the `git` command when a typo happens. For example:
Suggestions are automatically generated based on existing subcommands and use an implementation of [Levenshtein distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance). Every registered command that matches a minimum distance of 2 (ignoring case) will be displayed as a suggestion.
You can also explicitly set names for which a given command will be suggested using the `SuggestFor` attribute. This allows suggestions for strings that are not close in terms of string distance, but make sense in your set of commands but for which
Cobra can generate documentation based on subcommands, flags, etc. Read more about it in the [docs generation documentation](doc/README.md).
## Generating shell completions
Cobra can generate a shell-completion file for the following shells: bash, zsh, fish, PowerShell. If you add more information to your commands, these completions can be amazingly powerful and flexible. Read more about it in [Shell Completions](shell_completions.md).
## Providing Active Help
Cobra makes use of the shell-completion system to define a framework allowing you to provide Active Help to your users. Active Help are messages (hints, warnings, etc) printed as the program is being used. Read more about it in [Active Help](active_help.md).