Offline documentation for your Node REPL.
To install node-help, run:
npm install -g node-help
To uninstall node-help, run:
npm uninstall -g node-help
To update node-help to the latest published version, run:
npm update -g node-help
?: append to the end of a built-in Node object to get documentation on it.docs: show a list of long-form markdown articles to read.docs <topic>: render the article name in Markdown for the terminal
node-help is a custom Node.js REPL inspired by iPython that lets you append a question mark to any valid JavaScript token to get information about it.
- Documentation for un-aliased built-in lookups, e.g.
node-help > process.env?. - Basic Native JavaScript introspection support displaying objects' valueOf(), toString(), method and property values.
- Colorized short-and-longform documentation
- short-form docs are accessed with an appended
?and are rendered in colorized plain text - long-form docs are accessed via the
.docs <topic_name>command and are rendered in colorized markdown in the terminal
- short-form docs are accessed with an appended
- Command history and
globalcontext are enabled.
At present documentation is available for Node v8, v9 and 10. Native JavaScript documentation is coming soon, but there is rudimentary introspection for Native JavaScript objects (See the 'additional information' section of the output for any given search query').
Using the .docs command, you can list the available longform docs like this:
available Node.js docs:
+ addons
+ assert
+ async_hooks
+ buffer
+ child_process
+ cli
+ cluster
+ console
+ crypto
+ debugger
+ deprecations
+ dgram
+ dns
+ documentation
+ domain
+ errors
+ esm
+ events
+ fs
...
By running .docs http2, for example, you can read long-form documentation on the http2 module from the Node.js website as colorized Markdown in your terminal. Like, wee!
# HTTP/2
Stability: 1 - Experimental
The http2 module provides an implementation of the HTTP/2 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7540) protocol. It
can be accessed using:
const http2 = require('http2');
## Core API
The Core API provides a low-level interface designed specifically around
support for HTTP/2 protocol features. It is specifically not designed for
compatibility with the existing HTTP/1 (http.html) module API. However,
the Compatibility API (#http2_compatibility_api) is.
The http2 Core API is much more symmetric between client and server than the
http API. For instance, most events, like error, connect and stream, can
be emitted either by client-side code or server-side code.
### Server-side example
The following illustrates a simple HTTP/2 server using the Core API.
Since there are no browsers known that support
unencrypted HTTP/2 (https://http2.github.io/faq/#does-http2-require-encryption), the use of
http2.createSecureServer() (#http2_http2_createsecureserver_options_onrequesthandler) is necessary when communicating
with browser clients.
const http2 = require('http2');
const fs = require('fs');
...node-help > process?
[ 2 Result(s) for Node.js. ]
global | process
Name: process
Node.js Object Type: global
Signature(s): process
Description:
{Object}
The process object. See the process object section.
ChildProcess | process
Name: process
Node.js Object Type: ChildProcess
Signature(s): `process` {ChildProcess}
Description:
All workers are created using child_process.fork(), the returned object
from this function is stored as .process. In a worker, the global process
is stored.
See: Child Process module
Note that workers will call process.exit(0) if the 'disconnect' event occurs
on process and .exitedAfterDisconnect is not true. This protects against
accidental disconnection.
[ Additional Information ]
toString: '[object process]'
valueOf: '[object process]'
Constructor: process
local properties (non-methods):
_events arch debugPort execPath pid stderr version
_eventsCount argv domain features platform stdin versions
_exiting argv0 env mainModule ppid stdout
_maxListeners config execArgv moduleLoadList release title
local methods:
_debugEnd binding initgroups
_debugPause chdir kill
_debugProcess cpuUsage memoryUsage
_fatalException cwd nextTick
_getActiveHandles dlopen openStdin
_getActiveRequests emitWarning reallyExit
_kill exit setUncaughtExceptionCaptureCallback
_linkedBinding getegid setegid
_rawDebug geteuid seteuid
_startProfilerIdleNotifier getgid setgid
_stopProfilerIdleNotifier getgroups setgroups
_tickCallback getuid setuid
abort hasUncaughtExceptionCaptureCallback umask
assert hrtime uptime
node-help >See Contributing. The search algorithm for node-help is not perfect so there will be bugs. Please feel free to raise issues on the github issues page.