How to pass command line arguments to NodeJS launched from an executable script - node.js

Question

How to set what would otherwise be command-line arguments to node for a NodeJS process run from a launcher script? (The sh/CMD scripts npm places into node_modules/.bin.)
Plenty of NodeJS libraries / frameworks come with their own runner script, e.g. zeit/micro or moleculer that's usually executed from a npm script. This presents a problem in development, since in my case I want to do the equivalent of:
node --inspect -r ts-node/register -r dotenv-safe/config src/index.ts
(Except, of course, that does nothing since index.ts just exports something for the runner to pick up.)
Is there some "clean", preferably generic (i.e. not specific to a given framework's runner exposing those command line params) way that I'm missing to do this, ideally one that works as a npm script? The only thing that seems like it would work would be for e.g. micro:
node-dev -r ts-node/register ./node_modules/micro-dev/bin/micro-dev.js ./src/index.ts
which is kind of a mouthful from the Redundant Department of Redundancy Department and seems to obviate the point of having those launcher scripts. (It also won't work if the runner spawns other Node processes, but that's not a problem I'm actually having.) I'd like to not have to duplicate what the launcher scripts are already doing. I'm also aware of npx having --node-arg but npx is a whole another can of worms. (On Windows it's five seconds of startup time and one spurious error message just to run a script I already have installed; it also won't find an already installed package if it can't find its .cmd launcher script, e.g. when using Docker to run the dev environment. In short I'd rather not use npx for this.)
To clear up the confusion that seems to crop up in the comments: I want to override the command line parameters that affect the behaviour of the NodeJS runtime itself executing the runner script, not pass parameters to the script itself or to my code. That is, the options listed here: https://nodejs.org/api/cli.html

Answer 1

One option is to write a little wrapper script that uses the current process execPath to run child_process.execFile.
So the sample here is to be able to do
node --expose-http2 --zero-fill-buffers -r ./some-module.js ./test.js
but not actually write that out, instead have wrap.js inject the args:
node ./wrap.js ./test.js
I tested running this via npm in a package.json, and it works fine. I tested that it was working by having some-module.js stick a value on the global object, and then logging it in test.js.
Files involved:
wrap.js
const child_process = require('child_process');
const nodeArgs = ['--expose-http2', '--zero-fill-buffers', '-r', './some-module.js'];
const runTarget = process.argv[2];
console.log('going to wrap', runTarget, 'with', nodeArgs);
const finalArgs = nodeArgs.concat(runTarget).concat(process.argv.slice(2));
const child = child_process.execFile(
process.execPath,
finalArgs,
{
env: process.env,
cwd: process.cwd(),
stdio: 'inherit'
}, (e, stdout, stderr) => {
console.log('process completed');
if (e) {
process.emit('uncaughtException', e);
}
});
child.stdout.pipe(process.stdout);
child.stderr.pipe(process.stderr);
and
some-module.js
global.testval = 2;
and
test.js
console.log('hi guys, did the wrap work?', global.testval)
EDIT: So upon further thought, this solution really only satisfies wrapping the initial runner. But most tools, such as mocha re-spawn a sub process which would then lose this effect. To really get the job done, you can proxy each of the child process calls and somewhat enforce that calls to spawn and such also include your args.
I rewrote the code to reflect this. Here's a new setup:
package.json
{
"scripts": {
"test": "node -r ./ensure-wrapped.js node_modules/mocha/$(npm view mocha bin.mocha) ./test.js"
},
"dependencies": {
"mocha": "^5.1.0"
}
}
ensure-wrapped.js
const child_process = require('child_process');
// up here we can require code or do whatever we want;
global.testvalue = 'hi there'
const customParams = ['--zero-fill-buffers'];
// the code below injects itself into any child process's spawn/fork/exec calls
// so that it propogates
const matchNodeRe = /((:?\s|^|\/)node(:?(:?\.exe)|(:?\.js)|(:?\s+)|$))/;
const ensureWrappedLocation = __filename;
const injectArgsAndAddToParamsIfPathMatchesNode = (cmd, args, params) => {
params.unshift(...customParams);
params.unshift(args);
if (!Array.isArray(args)) { // all child_proc functions do [] optionally, then other params
args = []
params.unshift(args);
}
if (!matchNodeRe.test(cmd)) {
return params;
}
args.unshift(ensureWrappedLocation);
args.unshift('-r');
return params;
}
child_process._exec = child_process.exec;
child_process.exec = (cmd, ...params) => {
// replace node.js node.exe or /path/to/node to inject -r ensure-wrapped.js ...args..
// leaves alone exec if it isn't calling node
cmd = cmd.replace(matchNodeRe, '$1 -r ' + ensureWrappedLocation + ' ');
return child_process._exec(cmd, ...params)
}
child_process._execFile = child_process.execFile;
child_process.execFile = (path, args, ...params) => {
params = injectArgsAndAddToParamsIfPathMatchesNode(path, args, params);
return child_process._execFile(path, ...params)
}
child_process._execFileSync = child_process.execFileSync;
child_process.execFileSync = (path, args, ...params) => {
params = injectArgsAndAddToParamsIfPathMatchesNode(path, args, params);
return child_process._execFileSync(path, ...params);
}
child_process._execSync = child_process.execSync;
child_process.execSync = (cmd, ...params) => {
cmd = cmd.replace(matchNodeRe, '$1 -r ' + ensureWrappedLocation + ' ');
return child_process._exec(bin, ...args)
}
child_process._fork = child_process.fork;
child_process.fork = (module, args, ...params) => {
params = injectArgsAndAddToParamsIfPathMatchesNode(process.execPath, args, params);
return child_process._fork(module, ...params);
}
child_process._spawn = child_process.spawn;
child_process.spawn = (cmd, args, ...params) => {
params = injectArgsAndAddToParamsIfPathMatchesNode(cmd, args, params);
return child_process._spawn(cmd, ...params)
}
child_process._spawnSync = child_process.spawnSync;
child_process.spawnSync = (cmd, args, ...params) => {
params = injectArgsAndAddToParamsIfPathMatchesNode(cmd, args, params);
return child_process._spawnSync(cmd, ...params);
}
test.js
describe('test', () => {
it('should have the global value pulled in by some-module.js', (done) => {
if (global.testvalue !== 'hi there') {
done(new Error('test value was not globally set'))
}
return done();
})
})
Please never put code like this into a node module that's published. modifying the global library functions is pretty bad.

Answer 2

Everything passed in the command line AFTER your nodejs application is parsed into an array called process.argv. So...
node myapp.js foo bar hello 5000
In your nodejs code...
const args = process.argv;
console.log(args[0]);
console.log(args[1]);
console.log(args[2]);
console.log(args[3]);
would yield...
foo
bar
hello
5000

Answer 3

I didnt get clear scenario of your problem,but as your question title ,we can execute the any cmd command from nodejs using npm libraries like:
import Promise from 'bluebird'
import cmd from 'node-cmd'
const getAsync = Promise.promisify(cmd.get, { multiArgs: true, context: cmd })
getAsync('node -v').then(data => {
console.log('cmd data', data)
}).catch(err => {
console.log('cmd err', err)
})