inquirer-maxlength-input-prompt

Input prompt with max length for inquirer

Extends the built-in input prompt type to allow a max input length to be specified, and shows a character counter which updates as the user types.

Usage

Install using npm or yarn:

yarn add inquirer-maxlength-input-prompt

Register the prompt with inquirer:

const inquirer = require('inquirer')
const MaxLengthInputPrompt = require('inquirer-maxlength-input-prompt')

// The name doesn't have to `maxlength-input` - it can be anything you like
inquirer.registerPrompt('maxlength-input', MaxLengthInputPrompt)

When you use the prompt, you must provide a maxLength option:

inquirer.prompt([
  {
    type: 'maxlength-input',
    name: 'title',
    message: 'Enter a title',
    maxLength: 20
  }
]).then(answers => {
  /* ...snip... */
})

Options

In addition to the options that the built-in input type prompt takes, this plugin also takes:

• maxLength (Number [required]): the maximum number of characters the user can enter

The following options behave slightly differently, and are demonstrated in:

• transformer (Function): you get the current answers hash as an extra (second) argument.
• validate (Function): for convenience, you get the raw user input as an extra (third) argument. This makes it easy to do checks against raw user input when you have a filter parameter that adds prefixes/suffixes/otherwise modifies the input.
  • the validation against maxLength is performed before your own custom validate function is invoked

These additions are demonstrated in the example "Adding a prefix" below.

Examples

Basic usage

const inquirer = require('inquirer')
const MaxLengthInputPrompt = require('inquirer-maxlength-input-prompt')

inquirer.registerPrompt('maxlength-input', MaxLengthInputPrompt)

inquirer.prompt([
  {
    type: 'maxlength-input',
    name: 'title',
    message: 'Enter a title',
    maxLength: 15
  }
]).then(console.log)

Adding a prefix

This example shows one way to prefix the user's input with a value and pretty print it during prompting, using the filter and transformer options respectively. In addition, this example also shows how the raw parameter that is passed to the validate function can be used - in this case, it is used to ensure the user still enters data despite the presence of the prefix.

const chalk = require('chalk')
const inquirer = require('inquirer')
const MaxLengthInputPrompt = require('inquirer-maxlength-input-prompt')

inquirer.registerPrompt('maxlength-input', MaxLengthInputPrompt)

inquirer.prompt([
  {
    type: 'list',
    name: 'commitType',
    message: 'What type of change are you committing?',
    choices: ['feature', 'fix', 'docs', 'other']
  },
  {
    type: 'maxlength-input',
    name: 'commitHeader',
    maxLength: 50,
    message: 'Enter the commit subject',
    validate(input, answers, raw) {
      if (!raw) {
        return 'Please enter a subject for your commit'
      }

      return true
    },
    filter(input, answers) {

      // Return prefix + input
      return `${answers.commitType}: ${input}`
    },
    transformer(input, answers) {

      // Pretty print prefix before input to assist user
      return chalk.blue(`${answers.commitType}: `) + input
    }
  }
]).then(console.log)