chalk vs commander
Node.js CLI Tools Comparison
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What's Node.js CLI Tools?

Node.js CLI Tools are libraries that help developers create command-line applications in JavaScript or TypeScript. These tools provide functionalities like parsing command-line arguments, formatting output, and handling user input, making it easier to build interactive and user-friendly terminal applications. chalk is a library for styling terminal strings with colors and effects, while commander is a framework for building command-line interfaces with support for commands, options, and help generation.

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chalk310,574,06222,31744.2 kB44 months agoMIT
commander192,135,81627,210201 kB153 months agoMIT
Feature Comparison: chalk vs commander

Purpose

  • chalk:

    chalk is designed for styling strings in the terminal. It allows you to easily add colors, backgrounds, and text effects to your output, making it more engaging and easier to read.

  • commander:

    commander is focused on building command-line interfaces. It provides a simple way to define commands, options, and arguments, along with automatic help generation, making it easier for users to understand how to use your CLI.

Complexity

  • chalk:

    chalk is very simple to use and requires minimal setup. You can start styling your terminal output with just a few lines of code.

  • commander:

    commander has a steeper learning curve, especially for complex applications with multiple commands and options. However, it provides a lot of functionality for building sophisticated CLI tools.

Customization

  • chalk:

    chalk allows for customization of colors and styles, but it is primarily limited to what the library provides. You can create your own styles, but it does not support theming out of the box.

  • commander:

    commander is highly customizable in terms of how you define commands and options. You can create nested commands, set default values, and even customize the help output.

Performance

  • chalk:

    chalk is lightweight and has minimal impact on performance. The main overhead comes from using colors and styles, but it is negligible for most applications.

  • commander:

    commander is also lightweight, but performance can be affected in applications with a large number of commands and options, especially if they are not structured efficiently.

Code Example

  • chalk:

    Styling terminal output with chalk

    const chalk = require('chalk');
console.log(chalk.blue('Hello, world!')); // Blue text
console.log(chalk.red.bold('Error!')); // Bold red text
console.log(chalk.green.bgYellow('Success!')); // Green text on yellow background
  • commander:

    Creating a simple CLI with commander

    const { Command } = require('commander');
const program = new Command();

program
  .name('example')
  .description('An example CLI')
  .version('1.0.0');

program.command('greet <name>')
  .description('Greet a person')
  .option('-t, --time <time>', 'Time of day')
  .action((name, options) => {
    const greeting = options.time ? `Good ${options.time},` : 'Hello,';
    console.log(`${greeting} ${name}!`);
  });

program.parse(process.argv);
How to Choose: chalk vs commander
  • chalk:

    Choose chalk if you want to add color and style to your terminal output. It is lightweight, easy to use, and perfect for enhancing the visual appeal of CLI applications.

  • commander:

    Choose commander if you need to build a structured command-line interface with support for multiple commands, options, and automatic help generation. It is ideal for creating complex CLI applications.

Similar Npm Packages to chalk

chalk is a popular npm package that allows developers to style their terminal output with colors and formatting. It provides an easy-to-use API for adding colors, backgrounds, and styles to text in the console, making it a favorite among Node.js developers for creating visually appealing command-line applications. With chalk, you can enhance the readability of logs, error messages, and other terminal outputs, helping users to quickly identify important information.

While chalk is widely used, there are several alternatives that offer similar functionality. Here are a few noteworthy options:

  • ansi-colors is a lightweight library that provides a simple way to style terminal strings with ANSI colors. It offers a straightforward API and is designed to be minimalistic, making it an excellent choice for developers who want to add color to their console output without the overhead of a larger library. If you prefer a simple and direct approach to styling terminal text, ansi-colors is a solid alternative to chalk.

  • colors is another popular library for styling terminal output. It extends the String prototype to add color and style methods directly to strings, allowing for a very intuitive syntax. While this can be convenient, it may lead to potential conflicts with other libraries that also modify the String prototype. If you are looking for a library that provides a more integrated approach to styling strings, colors might be the right fit for your project.

  • kleur is a modern and lightweight library for styling terminal output. It focuses on performance and simplicity, providing a fluent API for adding colors and styles to text. Kleur is designed to be a drop-in replacement for chalk, offering similar functionality with a smaller footprint. If you are looking for a fast and efficient alternative to chalk, kleur is worth considering.

To see how chalk compares with ansi-colors, colors, and kleur, check out the comparison: Comparing ansi-colors vs chalk vs colors vs kleur.

Similar Npm Packages to commander

commander is a popular library for building command-line interfaces (CLIs) in Node.js applications. It provides a simple and intuitive API for defining commands, options, and arguments, making it easy to create robust and user-friendly CLI tools. With its powerful features, such as command chaining, option parsing, and automatic help generation, commander is a go-to choice for many developers looking to build command-line applications.

While commander is a strong option for CLI development, there are several alternatives that also offer unique features and capabilities. Here are a few notable ones:

  • caporal is a command-line framework that aims to simplify the process of building CLI applications. It provides a rich set of features, including automatic help generation, command validation, and support for subcommands. caporal is particularly useful for developers who want a more opinionated structure for their CLI applications, allowing them to focus on building functionality rather than boilerplate code.

  • minimist is a lightweight library for parsing command-line arguments. Unlike commander, which provides a more comprehensive framework for building CLIs, minimist focuses solely on argument parsing. It is ideal for simple use cases where you need to quickly handle command-line arguments without the overhead of a full CLI framework. If your application requires minimal argument parsing and you prefer a straightforward approach, minimist is a great choice.

  • yargs is another powerful library for building command-line applications. It offers a rich set of features, including support for commands, options, and middleware, as well as automatic help generation. yargs is known for its flexibility and ease of use, making it a popular choice for developers who want to create complex CLI applications with minimal effort. Its extensive documentation and active community also make it a reliable option for building command-line tools.

To see how commander compares with caporal, minimist, and yargs, check out the comparison: Comparing caporal vs commander vs minimist vs yargs.

README for chalk



Chalk


Terminal string styling done right

Coverage Status npm dependents Downloads

Info

Highlights

Install

npm install chalk

IMPORTANT: Chalk 5 is ESM. If you want to use Chalk with TypeScript or a build tool, you will probably want to use Chalk 4 for now. Read more.

Usage

import chalk from 'chalk';

console.log(chalk.blue('Hello world!'));

Chalk comes with an easy to use composable API where you just chain and nest the styles you want.

import chalk from 'chalk';

const log = console.log;

// Combine styled and normal strings
log(chalk.blue('Hello') + ' World' + chalk.red('!'));

// Compose multiple styles using the chainable API
log(chalk.blue.bgRed.bold('Hello world!'));

// Pass in multiple arguments
log(chalk.blue('Hello', 'World!', 'Foo', 'bar', 'biz', 'baz'));

// Nest styles
log(chalk.red('Hello', chalk.underline.bgBlue('world') + '!'));

// Nest styles of the same type even (color, underline, background)
log(chalk.green(
	'I am a green line ' +
	chalk.blue.underline.bold('with a blue substring') +
	' that becomes green again!'
));

// ES2015 template literal
log(`
CPU: ${chalk.red('90%')}
RAM: ${chalk.green('40%')}
DISK: ${chalk.yellow('70%')}
`);

// Use RGB colors in terminal emulators that support it.
log(chalk.rgb(123, 45, 67).underline('Underlined reddish color'));
log(chalk.hex('#DEADED').bold('Bold gray!'));

Easily define your own themes:

import chalk from 'chalk';

const error = chalk.bold.red;
const warning = chalk.hex('#FFA500'); // Orange color

console.log(error('Error!'));
console.log(warning('Warning!'));

Take advantage of console.log string substitution:

import chalk from 'chalk';

const name = 'Sindre';
console.log(chalk.green('Hello %s'), name);
//=> 'Hello Sindre'

API

chalk.<style>[.<style>...](string, [string...])

Example: chalk.red.bold.underline('Hello', 'world');

Chain styles and call the last one as a method with a string argument. Order doesn't matter, and later styles take precedent in case of a conflict. This simply means that chalk.red.yellow.green is equivalent to chalk.green.

Multiple arguments will be separated by space.

chalk.level

Specifies the level of color support.

Color support is automatically detected, but you can override it by setting the level property. You should however only do this in your own code as it applies globally to all Chalk consumers.

If you need to change this in a reusable module, create a new instance:

import {Chalk} from 'chalk';

const customChalk = new Chalk({level: 0});

| Level | Description | | :---: | :--- | | 0 | All colors disabled | | 1 | Basic color support (16 colors) | | 2 | 256 color support | | 3 | Truecolor support (16 million colors) |

supportsColor

Detect whether the terminal supports color. Used internally and handled for you, but exposed for convenience.

Can be overridden by the user with the flags --color and --no-color. For situations where using --color is not possible, use the environment variable FORCE_COLOR=1 (level 1), FORCE_COLOR=2 (level 2), or FORCE_COLOR=3 (level 3) to forcefully enable color, or FORCE_COLOR=0 to forcefully disable. The use of FORCE_COLOR overrides all other color support checks.

Explicit 256/Truecolor mode can be enabled using the --color=256 and --color=16m flags, respectively.

chalkStderr and supportsColorStderr

chalkStderr contains a separate instance configured with color support detected for stderr stream instead of stdout. Override rules from supportsColor apply to this too. supportsColorStderr is exposed for convenience.

modifierNames, foregroundColorNames, backgroundColorNames, and colorNames

All supported style strings are exposed as an array of strings for convenience. colorNames is the combination of foregroundColorNames and backgroundColorNames.

This can be useful if you wrap Chalk and need to validate input:

import {modifierNames, foregroundColorNames} from 'chalk';

console.log(modifierNames.includes('bold'));
//=> true

console.log(foregroundColorNames.includes('pink'));
//=> false

Styles

Modifiers

  • reset - Reset the current style.
  • bold - Make the text bold.
  • dim - Make the text have lower opacity.
  • italic - Make the text italic. (Not widely supported)
  • underline - Put a horizontal line below the text. (Not widely supported)
  • overline - Put a horizontal line above the text. (Not widely supported)
  • inverse- Invert background and foreground colors.
  • hidden - Print the text but make it invisible.
  • strikethrough - Puts a horizontal line through the center of the text. (Not widely supported)
  • visible- Print the text only when Chalk has a color level above zero. Can be useful for things that are purely cosmetic.

Colors

  • black
  • red
  • green
  • yellow
  • blue
  • magenta
  • cyan
  • white
  • blackBright (alias: gray, grey)
  • redBright
  • greenBright
  • yellowBright
  • blueBright
  • magentaBright
  • cyanBright
  • whiteBright

Background colors

  • bgBlack
  • bgRed
  • bgGreen
  • bgYellow
  • bgBlue
  • bgMagenta
  • bgCyan
  • bgWhite
  • bgBlackBright (alias: bgGray, bgGrey)
  • bgRedBright
  • bgGreenBright
  • bgYellowBright
  • bgBlueBright
  • bgMagentaBright
  • bgCyanBright
  • bgWhiteBright

256 and Truecolor color support

Chalk supports 256 colors and Truecolor (16 million colors) on supported terminal apps.

Colors are downsampled from 16 million RGB values to an ANSI color format that is supported by the terminal emulator (or by specifying {level: n} as a Chalk option). For example, Chalk configured to run at level 1 (basic color support) will downsample an RGB value of #FF0000 (red) to 31 (ANSI escape for red).

Examples:

  • chalk.hex('#DEADED').underline('Hello, world!')
  • chalk.rgb(15, 100, 204).inverse('Hello!')

Background versions of these models are prefixed with bg and the first level of the module capitalized (e.g. hex for foreground colors and bgHex for background colors).

  • chalk.bgHex('#DEADED').underline('Hello, world!')
  • chalk.bgRgb(15, 100, 204).inverse('Hello!')

The following color models can be used:

  • rgb - Example: chalk.rgb(255, 136, 0).bold('Orange!')
  • hex - Example: chalk.hex('#FF8800').bold('Orange!')
  • ansi256 - Example: chalk.bgAnsi256(194)('Honeydew, more or less')

Browser support

Since Chrome 69, ANSI escape codes are natively supported in the developer console.

Windows

If you're on Windows, do yourself a favor and use Windows Terminal instead of cmd.exe.

FAQ

Why not switch to a smaller coloring package?

Chalk may be larger, but there is a reason for that. It offers a more user-friendly API, well-documented types, supports millions of colors, and covers edge cases that smaller alternatives miss. Chalk is mature, reliable, and built to last.

But beyond the technical aspects, there's something more critical: trust and long-term maintenance. I have been active in open source for over a decade, and I'm committed to keeping Chalk maintained. Smaller packages might seem appealing now, but there's no guarantee they will be around for the long term, or that they won't become malicious over time.

Chalk is also likely already in your dependency tree (since 100K+ packages depend on it), so switching won’t save space—in fact, it might increase it. npm deduplicates dependencies, so multiple Chalk instances turn into one, but adding another package alongside it will increase your overall size.

If the goal is to clean up the ecosystem, switching away from Chalk won’t even make a dent. The real problem lies with packages that have very deep dependency trees (for example, those including a lot of polyfills). Chalk has no dependencies. It's better to focus on impactful changes rather than minor optimizations.

If absolute package size is important to you, I also maintain yoctocolors, one of the smallest color packages out there.

- Sindre

But the smaller coloring package has benchmarks showing it is faster

Micro-benchmarks are flawed because they measure performance in unrealistic, isolated scenarios, often giving a distorted view of real-world performance. Don't believe marketing fluff. All the coloring packages are more than fast enough.

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