We've recently been dabbling with creating command line applications with ruby internally. You can do some really cool things with tools like GLI and Formatador with relative ease.
I presented some of our learnings to the Route 9 Ruby Group and recorded it. There were some great questions and discussion.
Writing command line applications with ruby is a nice break from the web-based world. I find you can focus much more on the intent of the app than the aesthetic, so it might provide a useful way to prototype some data intensive applications.
The big takeaways I shared with the group:
- Just like you would in your web applicatiions, respect the design pattern of Model, View, Controller (MVC) - it keeps things nice and modularized
- Test all permutations of commands, switches, and flags as best you can. Sometimes, you get some weird interferences or side effects
- Delegate to an object oriented API to keep everything testable
- Document how you want to use the command line application first. It really helps to keep it user friendly.
- Get the excellent book: Build Awesome Command-Line Applications in Ruby