Thinkmine.NetX 1.0.17-preview

NetX

Release Notes Version Preview 1

This is a preview version of NetX focused on exploring functionality, usage scenarios, and feasibility. While all commands have been tested, all error conditions have not been encountered.

1.0.12-preview Changes

• Added current_user
• Added set_env for setting environment variables
• Added exit for terminating the underlying process

1.0.3-preview Changes

• Added support for Linux and OSX to exec
• Added environment_variables
• Added ```prompt(<text>)``

1.0.1-preview Changes

• Added commandline
• Added environment_variables
• Added prompt(<text>)

Why netx

With the release of .NET 10 comes a powerful new feature to C#, dotnet run file. This capability in the new .NET build toolchain lets us run C# files directly from the dotnet run command. This means that we can easily execute functionality, using C#, in a manner very similar to writing scripts. To find out more about this feature here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/announcing-dotnet-run-app/

Of course there are still a number of differences, as C# even though extremely powerful is quite verbose in comparison to the needs of a script. This is obviously because it is designed primarily to be a language for building applications.

How it works

With the netx nuget and additional toolkit we make it easy for you to execute the most common script tasks by exposing those capabilities to you in a manner that can be easily leveraged for automation and general purpose scripting. netx offers the best of both worlds as you can seamlessly switch between top-down scripts and more sophisticated coding all in the same document.

Here is what a sample netx script looks like. Assuming this file was called dostuff.cs you can run this code and execute this functionality dotnet run dostuff.cs

#:package Thinkmine.NetX@1.0.13-preview
using static netx;

exec("dir");
exec("echo hello");
pwd();
cd("../../..");
rename("test.txt", "helloworld.txt");
list();
copy("bin", "test");
list();
pwd();
copy("program.cs", "c:/temp", true, "hello.cs");
pack("c:/temp", "temp.zip");
list();
unpack("temp.zip", "destination");
delete("temp.zip");
delete("destination");
delete("test");

Using netx you can add high level concepts like loops, function calls, referencing libraries, and much more to your scripting experience. We can, for instance, apply some conditional logic to our script from above as follows:

var passcode = prompt("What is your passcode");
if (passcode == "netx")
{
    exec("dir");
    exec("echo hello");
    pwd();
    cd("../../..");
    rename("test.txt", "helloworld.txt");
    list();
    copy("bin", "test");
    list();
    pwd();
    copy("program.cs", "c:/temp", "hello.cs");
    pack("c:/temp", "temp.zip");
    list();
    unpack("temp.zip", "destination");
    delete("temp.zip");
    delete("destination");
    delete("test");


    var v = http_get("http://www.google.com");
    print(v);

    var v2 = http_post("http://www.google.com", new
    {
        Name = "John",
        Age = 33,
    });
    print(v2);

    rename("helloworld.txt", "test.txt");
}
else
{
    print("You can't do this", "white", "red");
}

Now when the script runs the user is prompted to enter a passcode that we then check to see it's validity. Based on that we either execute the normal path or let the user know it can't be done.

Accessing command line arguments

To access command line arguments use the commandline global object. This object returns a string array of all the arguments passed into the program at run time. In the example below we use this object to detect whether any command line arguments have been sent in and print out the first argument if true.

print(commandline.Length.ToString());
if (commandline.Length > 0)
    print($"Command Line: {commandline[0]}");

Accessing environment variables

To access environment variables use the environment_variables global object. This object returns a string based name value dictionary of all global list of environment variables in scope during the exection of the program.

foreach (var item in environment_variables)
{
    print($"{item.Key}={item.Value}");
}

Calling Functions

We can even take it a bit further with the ability to make function calls.

var passcode = prompt("What is your passcode");
if (Validate(passcode))
{
    //normal flow
}
else
{
    print("You can't do this", "white", "red");
}


bool Validate(string passcode)
{
    if(passcode == "netx")
    return true;

    return false;
}

Basic commands

netx currently has 20 commands you can perform with it. The table below provides instructions on what they are and how to use them.