spacingbat3 / kolor

A simple Node.js module to add "kolors" to your console. Now being "strongly typed"!

@spacingbat3/kolor

A simple Node.js module to add kolors to you console!

Kolor is a Polish word that means colour / color.

Usage:

ESM / TypeScript:

1. Importing selected group of functions (colors or modifiers[*]):

import {colors, modifiers} from "@spacingbat3/kolor"

// Because errors should be red :)
console.error(colors.red("ERROR: Something went wrong!"))

// Modifiers are grouped by `safe` and `other`:
console.log(modifiers.safe.bold("Definitely important text."))

2. Importing default object as colors that contains all method packed in one object (except other modifiers, they're in unsafe object).

import colors from "@spacingbat3/kolor"

// Now, syntax is similar to the one in `colors/safe` module.
console.warn(colors.bold("==> "+colors.brightYellow("Warning:"))+" Something happened!")

CommonJS:

// Synchronously with `require` (CommonJS):
const { colors, modifiers } = require("@spacingbat3/kolor")

console.log(colors.purple("Colorized text goes here."));

// or, with "default" object

const colors_2 = require("@spacingbat3/kolor").default;

console.log(colors_2.purple("Colorized text goes here."));

// Async with `import` (ESM):
import("@spacingbat3/kolor")
   .then(kolor => {
      // Here, default, colors and modifiers objects are available.
      const { colors, modifiers } = kolor;
      console.debug(colors.gray(colors.bold("Debug")+": some information goes here!"));
   })
   .catch(e => console.error(e));

Why I started to develop it?

In general, I made this module as an answer to colors library sabotage. I decided to neither thrust colors not any alternatives to it, when I only need some of its features.

You can use this library as well in your project, this is why I publish it. You may ask: should I trust you? It depends on what you need – as ISC license says, this program has no guarantee it will work as expected, yet this software is developed in hope to be useful to anyone (like most OSS software should be developed). Also, I may not frequently improve it, I made it specifically for my personal needs, if you need something more complex just use another library.

Please note it's syntax is not fully compatible with colors, specifically it is not touching the String.prototype. You may find it easier to move from colors/safe, through. If you need a library that uses String.prototype to easily switch from colors, this module is not for you, neither chalk is.

Why not just use chalk or fork of colors?

This project has a different philosophy that both of these projects. It's neither an ESM module nor has any rich features – it's much more simple, doing only some simple tests to detect if text should be colorized or not and being limited (at least for now) only to 16-bit color palete. It might be however much more performant, as it uses ES2021 features to be much shorter, simpler and not being bloated with unnecessary colors.

Another difference (at least from colors) is that kolor separates some ANSI escape codes that are not working on all platforms, which you may find useful if your application is meant to be cross-platform.

Since v3.2.0 it also provides the type definitions for transforming the literal types, which makes TypeScript to accurately predict all combinations of types for the library and overall improves the type accuracy (not just for literals).

Legal

This project is licensed under the ISC license, which should be distributed with this project. Not distributing it with this library might be against the license – please read the license for further information.