Generate Code

Once you have the interfaces defined in the input file(s), it’s time to run the CLI to generate some code!

There are 2 flags that will be most commonly used:

  • -p/--protocol: A string that identifies your package/library. This is used to distinguish between multiple libraries generated with workex operating on the same messaging channel. It can also contain some versioning scheme to identify version mismatch, if your protocol is meant to be implemented by others. (For example, your webapp support custom UI widgets through iframes)
  • -l/--link: This links 2 interfaces so that if one side of the connection implements one, the other side is assumed to implement the other. An interface can only be linked to one other interfaces. Unlinked interfaces are linked to a “stub” interface, i.e. the communication becomes one-direction.

In the example directory, run the following command, which generates code that refers to the testapp protocol and links our AppSide and WorkerSide

workex src/Interfaces.ts -p testapp -l AppSide,WorkerSide

Tip

The protocol string is also used as prefix for generated functions, if it only contains lowercase alphabetic characters (a-z). Otherwise, you also need specify --prefix flag to specify another prefix. Using this flag is recommended if your protocol contains a version. For example

workex -p myproto-1.0.0 --prefix myproto

Note

The order of -l arguments don’t matter, i.e. -l WorkerSide,AppSide behaves exactly the same

This should generate the src/interfaces/ directory. Note:

  • You can use --dir to change the name interfaces to something else, but you can’t change the output location otherwise.
  • If there are multiple input files, they must be in the same directory

The directory structure should now look something like:

- src/
  - interfaces/
    - AppSide.ts
    - AppSide.bus.ts
    - WorkerSide.ts
    - WorkerSide.bus.ts
    - .gitignore
  - Interfaces.ts
- package.json
- tsconfig.json

The .gitignore file is automatically generated to ignore everything in the interfaces directory. You can turn it off with --no-gitignore.

Tip

The generated files should be ignored from check tools like ESLint or Prettier. See ESLint Documentation or Prettier Documentation. The tool doesn’t emit any disable directives because they might cause issues, for example with ESLint’s --report-unused-directives option.

If you don’t mean to git-ignore the output, you can also use a wrapper command to call the CLI then run prettier or other formatter to fix the output.