nu_plugin_explore

A fast interactive explorer tool for structured data inspired by nu-explore

table of content

• introduction
  • the idea behind an explorer
  • why not nu-explore?
• installation
  • using nupm install (recommended)
  • building from source
• usage
  • demo
• configuration
  • default configuration
  • an example
  • some convenience
• see the documentation locally
• troubleshooting
• contributing
• TODO
  • features
  • internal

introduction

the idea behind an explorer

i think having an interactive explorer for structured data is a requirement for a shell like Nushell!
the ability to

• traverse the data with a few quick key bindings
• peek the data at any level
• edit the data on the fly (COMING SOON)
• all while being configurable

will come very handy in a day-to-day basis for me at least :)

why not nu-explore?

• it's a bit too complex for what it does to me
• the bindings are not configurable
• the code was really hard to wrap my head around
• i wanted to have fun learning about Nushell plugins and TUI applications in Rust

so here we are... LET'S GO 💪

installation

Important if you are using bleeding-edge versions of Nushell, please make sure the Nushell dependencies are the same as your Nushell install by running

use scripts/deps.nu; deps --current

using nupm install (recommended)

• download nushell/nupm
• load the nupm module

use /path/to/nupm/

• run the install process

nupm install --path .

building from source

• build the plugin

make build

• register the plugin in Nushell

make register

• do not forget to restart Nushell

Note
alternatively, you can use directly make install

usage

• get some help

help nu_plugin_explore

• run the command

open Cargo.toml | nu_plugin_explore

demo

configuration

default configuration

you can find it in default.nuon.

you can copy-paste it in your config.nu and set $env.config.plugins.explore to it:

$env.config.plugins.explore = {
    # content of the default config
}

alternately, you can copy-paste the default config file to $nu.default-config-dir and add the following line to your config.nu

$env.config.plugins.explore = (open ($nu.default-config-dir | path join "nu_plugin_explore.nu"))

an example

if you do not like the Vim bindings by default you can replace the navigation part with

$env.config.plugins.explore.keybindings.navigation = {
    left: 'left',
    down: 'down',
    up: 'up',
    right: 'right',
}

and voila 😋

see the documentation locally

cargo doc --document-private-items --no-deps --open

troubleshooting

in case you get some weird error or behaviour, before filing any issue, the easiest is to make sure the plugin is compiled with the same revision as the Nushell you are using!

use scripts/deps.nu; deps --current

and then you can come back to the installation section.

Note of course, this will not work if the version of Nushell you are using is too old, because then the state of nu_plugin_explore will be too recent for everything to compile properly...

contributing

in order to help, you can have a look at

• the todo list down below, there might be unticked tasks to tackle
• the issues and bugs in the issue tracker
• the FIXME and TODO comments in the source base

TODO

features

• support non-character bindings
• when going into a file or URL, open it
• give different colors to names and type
• show true tables as such
• get the config from $env.config => can parse configuration from CLI
• add check for the config to make sure it's valid
• support for editing cells in INSERT mode
  • string cells
  • other simple cells
  • all the cells
• detect if a string is of a particular type, path, URL, ...

internal

• add tests...
  • to navigation.rs to make sure the navigation in the data is ok
  • to app.rs to make sure the application state machine works
  • to parsing.rs to make sure the parsing of the config works
  • to tui.rs to make sure the rendering works as intended
• get rid of the .clones
• handle errors properly (.unwraps and panic!s)
• restrict the visibility of objects when possible
• write better error messages when some test fails