Abp CLI Template

Intro

In this post we will see how to create a Cli for your abp application.

Why a CLI?

The CLI is a great way to automate repetitive tasks. I use it to import large amounts of data into the database, to create new entities, to seed dummy data, etc.

Create a new CLI

To create a new CLI, you need to install the cli dotnet new template.

dotnet new install Anto.Cli.Template

Then you can create a new CLI project.

dotnet new cli-template -o MyProject --api myabpproject.com

Note: The --api parameter is the url of your abp project.

How to use it

The CLI is a dotnet core console application. You can run it with the following command.

dotnet run -- --help

Features

• Login
• Logout
• Seed Tenant
• Seed User

Future plans

• Import data from csv

Setup

Once you have created the cli there are few things you need to do.

• Create a new OpenIdConnect client in your abp project for the cli.
• Update the ClientId and Scope in the AuthService.cs file.

Generating HttpClient?

The CLI uses the abp REST API to communicate with the abp project. But that means you need to generate the HttpClient before you can use it. To do that, I have used nswag to generate the client. To generate the client, you need to run the following command.

yarn gen-api

Note: You need to have nswag installed globally.#

Check the package.json file for more details.

Storing the token

The CLI stores the token in the access-token.bin file. If you want to change the location of the file, you can change it in the CliPaths.cs file. the token is not encrypted, keep that in mind.

Code generation

This cli uses plop to generate code. You can find the templates in the plop-templates folder. You can add your own templates there.

Right now, there is only 3 templates. you can just run the following command to generate the code.

yarn plop

Note: Make sure you have install npm packages before running the command.

Repo: https://github.com/antosubash/abp-cli-template

Conclusion

This is a very simple CLI, but it can be very useful. I hope you like it.