Node.js multiline input

Question

I'd like to prompt the user for input, let the user enter multiple lines of text, hitting enter between each line, then terminate the input by pressing CTRL+D or some such thing.

With "keypress", I can catch the EOF, but I would have to handle all the echoing, backspace handling, terminal escape sequences, etc. manually. It would be much better if I could use "readline", but somehow intercept the CTRL+D (EOF) with "keypress", but I'm not sure how I would go about that.

Hadleigh

Answer 1

You can use the line and close events:

var readline = require('readline');

var input = [];

var rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: process.stdin,
    output: process.stdout
});

rl.prompt();

rl.on('line', function (cmd) {

    input.push(cmd);
});

rl.on('close', function (cmd) {

    console.log(input.join('\n'));
    process.exit(0);
});

Orifice

Commands such as git also open a default editor for user input. Is this also possible with Node? – Huynh

Answer 2

The @inquirer/editor package does a great job this

It opens the user's default editor for input

For example

import editor from '@inquirer/editor';

const story = await editor({
  message: "Tell me a story",
  waitForUseInput: true,
  postfix: '.md',
})

https://www.npmjs.com/package/@inquirer/editor

Bracelet