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Baapan

Baapan brings the all of the NPM goodness right into your REPL. On-the-fly!!.

Using Node REPL for quick local testing is a common practice among JavaScript/Node developers. But the problem with the REPL is, you don't have the luxury to take advantage of the entire NPM ecosystem out-of-the-box.

An alternative is, using something like RunKit. But fiddling with sensitive data in an online tool is not the best choice for many developers.

While using Node REPL, if you feel you need an NPM module to quickly test something (e.g, lodash to do some quick object/array manipulation, uuid to quickly generate some uuid), you'll have to manually install it via NPM and load it onto the REPL. Here's how baapan makes it easy!!!

Baapan - the life saver

Baapan intercepts require() calls and automatically installs the module if the module is not locally available. You can require() whatever you want, and Baapan will require() it for you? Don't you think it's cool??

Getting Started

Step 1: Install baapan globally

Simply run:

npm install -g baapan

This will install baapan CLI command.

Step 2: Load Baapan

You can launch Baapan by just running baapan command on terminal after installation. baapan will launch the NodeJS REPL for you.

$ baapan

That's it. You can now require() everything you want!!

This time I need to generate a random IP address. I can require chance to do that.

Switching to workspace /Users/deepal/.baapan/workspace_13531_1583696915861
Workspace loaded!
> const chance = require('chance').Chance()
undefined
> chance.ip()
'213.15.210.129'

Baapan accepts any Node command line argument

We want baapan to be identical to the good old Node REPL as much as possible. Therefore, baapan supports ANY Node JS command line argument which the Node CLI supports. Even --help.

You can type baapan --help to see all the Node command line arguments supported by baapan. The output is nothing but a node --help.

Usage: node [options] [ script.js ] [arguments]
       node inspect [options] [ script.js | host:port ] [arguments]

Options:
  -                                   script read from stdin (default if no file name is
                                      provided, interactive mode if a tty)
  --                                  indicate the end of node options
  --abort-on-uncaught-exception       aborting instead of exiting causes a core file to
                                      be generated for analysis
  -c, --check                         syntax check script without executing
  --completion-bash                   print source-able bash completion script
  --cpu-prof                          Start the V8 CPU profiler on start up, and write
                                      the CPU profile to disk before exit. If
                                      --cpu-prof-dir is not specified, write the profile
                                      to the current working directory.
  --cpu-prof-dir=...                  Directory where the V8 profiles generated by
                                      --cpu-prof will be placed. Does not affect --prof.
...

One good part of this is, you'll have access to the features such as --experimental-repl-await command line argument

e.g,

$ baapan --experimental-repl-await
Switching to workspace /Users/deepal/.baapan/workspace_13531_1583696915861
Workspace loaded!
> await Promise.resolve('It works')
'It works'
>

Baapan Workspace

Every instance of baapan REPL server has its own workspace independent of each other. All module installations are done within the boundary of the workspace. This helps you open multiple baapan REPLs at once, install different modules without any conflicts. Current workspace for the REPL is automatically cleaned-up when you gracefully exit the REPL shell (e.g, pressing ctrl+c twice or .exit command).

Note! If the REPL process was killed forcefully, the workspace directory will not be cleaned up automatically. You have to clean up these stale workspace directories manually.

Workspaces are by-default created in $HOME/.baapan/ directory. You can see the workspace directory for your REPL session by reading the BAAPAN_WS_PATH environment variable.

e.g,

> process.env.BAAPAN_WS_PATH
'/Users/djayasekara/.baapan/workspace_44023_1562678000424'

Persist Workspace And Modules

Baapan will not create a fresh workspace upon startup if the user has explicitly provided one using the BAAPAN_WS_PATH environment variable.

If it was provided explicitly, baapan will not clean up the workspace when the session is closed and you can persist the workspace and modules you install.

You can explicitly provide BAAPAN_WS_PATH as follows:

e.g.

Windows

$ set process.env.BAAPAN_WS_PATH=D:\nodejs\baapan-modules-repo
$ baapan
Switching to workspace D:\nodejs\baapan-modules-repo
Workspace loaded!
> process.env.BAAPAN_WS_PATH
'D:\\nodejs\\baapan-modules-repo'

Unix/Linux

$ BAAPAN_WS_PATH=/Users/johndoe/baapan-modules-repo baapan
Switching to workspace /Users/johndoe/baapan-modules-repo
Workspace loaded!
> process.env.BAAPAN_WS_PATH
'/Users/johndoe/baapan-modules-repo'

Feel free to drop any issues/feature requests/PRs at any time!!

baapan i.e, "බාපං" in Sinhala language is the translation for fetch/download 🇱🇰

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