/* Package cmds helps building both standalone and client-server applications. Semantics The basic building blocks are requests, commands, emitters and responses. A command consists of a description of the parameters and a function. The function is passed the request as well as an emitter as arguments. It does operations on the inputs and sends the results to the user by emitting them. There are a number of emitters in this package and subpackages, but the user is free to create their own. Commands A command is a struct containing the commands help text, a description of the arguments and options, the command's processing function and a type to let the caller know what type will be emitted. Optionally one of the functions PostRun and Encoder may be defined that consumes the function's emitted values and generates a visual representation for e.g. the terminal. Encoders work on a value-by-value basis, while PostRun operates on the value stream. Emitters An emitter has the Emit method, that takes the command's function's output as an argument and passes it to the user. type ResponseEmitter interface { Close() error CloseWithError(error) error SetLength(length uint64) Emit(value interface{}) error } The command's function does not know what kind of emitter it works with, so the same function may run locally or on a server, using an rpc interface. Emitters can also send errors using the SetError method. The user-facing emitter usually is the cli emitter. Values emitter here will be printed to the terminal using either the Encoders or the PostRun function. Responses A response is a value that the user can read emitted values from. type Response interface { Request() Request Error() *Error Length() uint64 Next() (interface{}, error) } Responses have a method Next() that returns the next emitted value and an error value. If the last element has been received, the returned error value is io.EOF. If the application code has sent an error using SetError, the error ErrRcvdError is returned on next, indicating that the caller should call Error(). Depending on the reponse type, other errors may also occur. Pipes Pipes are pairs (emitter, response), such that a value emitted on the emitter can be received in the response value. Most builtin emitters are "pipe" emitters. The most prominent examples are the channel pipe and the http pipe. The channel pipe is backed by a channel. The only error value returned by the response is io.EOF, which happens when the channel is closed. The http pipe is backed by an http connection. The response can also return other errors, e.g. if there are errors on the network. Examples To get a better idea of what's going on, take a look at the examples at https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs-cmds/tree/master/examples. */ package cmds