Often, the desire to create a console application for a specific purpose is hindered by the need to develop nearly everything from the ground up. The repetitive tasks involved in building, such as command parsing, data management, and recurring business logic, can quickly drain one's patience. To eliminate these cumbersome obstacles, it's high time to introduce a command application platform that streamlines the process, enabling rapid development of console applications.
Burrow's philosophy is elegantly straightforward: it operates on the principle that each console application should have a singular focus, managing a specific type of data comprised of numerous entries. In this paradigm, each entry is represented as an object with string-based keys and values. Every application governs a collection of these entries and provides a set of accessible commands. To streamline development and minimize code redundancy, Burrow employs a plugin-based architecture where distinct functionalities are encapsulated within individual plugins. Consequently, an application essentially functions as a composite of these plugins, offering a modular and efficient approach to software design.
Burrow requires Java 21 as prerequisite.
Let's start by using a simple built-in application.
# Create an entry [grocery -> 36.45]
burrow budget new grocery 36.45
# Look up the values associated with the key "grocery"
burrow budget key grocery
# Output
[ "36.45" ]In this example, budget is the name of the application we are using. The first command creates an entry, where key is "grocery" and value is "36.45". The second command looks up all values associated with the key "grocery", and it outputs a list containing the value of the entry we just created.
You may already discover the pattern of the command in burrow:
burrow <app_name> <command> [...<args>]There are a few of commands that work for all apps (if the app does not override them), such as the empty command, which shows the help information of the application, or the root, which outputs the root directory of the application. We can try to get the root directory of the budget app by:
burrow budget rootUsually, the root directory of an application is ~/.burrow/app/<app_name> on macOS.
Within Burrow, four fundamental commands are inherently tied to managing entries: new, entry, exist, and delete. These commands are considered "builtin",signifying that they are standard across all applications unless specifically overridden. Notably, Burrow features a special builtin application dubbed builtin, which does not alter any existing commands within the Burrow framework.
# Create an empty entry
burrow builtin new
# >> Entry created: [1] { }
# Here, 1 is the ID of the entry created
# Check if an entry associated with the given key exists
burrow builtin exist 2
# >> False
# Delete an entry associated with the given key
burrow builtin delete 1
# >> Entry deleted: [1] { }KeyValue is an essential builtin plugin in Burrow. It overrides the new command and allows users to create an entry with a key and a value. The builtin app Budget uses the KeyValue plugin, enabling us to create an entry like this:
burrow budget insurance 105.90
# >> Entry created: [1] { key: "insurance", value: "105.90" }