Updated documentation desperately needed

[tomwitt2]

The documentation found here (Discover how to use fx effectively, a JSON manipulation command line tool) is woefully out of date.

• The planets data source used in the early examples has moved and is now behind a paywall.
• The groupBy examples are not working (with 24.1.0)
• The ~/.fxrc examples aren't working (strace indicates the file being referenced is ~/fxrc.js)
• There's a comment that .fxrc is updated in npm 28.0.0 but there's no clear indication of how to install this version (node newbie here)
• I'm unable to get interactive mode to work (Ubuntu 22.04; KDE; terminator)

Despite this, the fx tool has been tremendously valuable for me and I'm itching to get at the snippets and it's full potential. I'm unsure how to move forward.

-- Tom

[antonmedv]

Well, maybe you can write an update for the article? =) Will add you as a co-author.

[tomwitt2]

You betcha! But I need to get snippets and ~/.fxrc[.js] to work first. That's kinda my point.

Here's where I am. I'm not sure how to get past this point.

tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # where is my fx utility
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ which fx
/usr/local/bin/fx

tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # what version is it
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ fx -v
24.1.0

tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # 24.1.0 appears to use ~/.fxrc.js vs ~/.fxrc; list it
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ cat ~/.fxrc.js
Object.assign(global, require('lodash/fp'))

global.table = (json) => {
    let Table = require('cli-table3')
    let table = new Table({head: Object.keys(json[0])})
    table.push(...json.map(Object.values))
    return table.toString()
}

tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # where are my node modules located
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ npm root -g
/home/tom/.nvm/versions/node/v18.16.1/lib/node_modules

tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # list the node modules referenced in the documentation
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ npm list fx cli-table3 lodash
[email protected] /home/tom
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]         ; #<-- different version number than the fx in my $PATH; assuming this is a pure node library; how to invoke?
├── [email protected]
└─┬ [email protected]
  ├─┬ @verdaccio/[email protected]
  │ ├── [email protected] deduped
  │ └─┬ [email protected]
  │   └── [email protected] deduped
  ├─┬ @verdaccio/[email protected]
  │ └─┬ [email protected]
  │   └─┬ [email protected]
  │     └─┬ [email protected]
  │       └── [email protected] deduped
  └── [email protected] deduped

tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # assure NODE_PATH is set to the current node_modules directory
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ export NODE_PATH=$( npm root -g )
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ echo $NODE_PATH
/home/tom/.nvm/versions/node/v18.16.1/lib/node_modules

tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # show the data.json file
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ cat data.json
[
  { "name": "John", "age": 25 },
  { "name": "Jane", "age": 30 },
  { "name": "Alice", "age": 25 }
]

tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # try an fx groupBy
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ fx 'groupBy("age")' < data.json
ReferenceError: global is not defined at <eval>:2:15(4)    ; # <-- why?

tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # try a simple listing
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ cat data.json | fx .
[
  {
    "name": "John",
    "age": 25
  },
  {
    "name": "Jane",
    "age": 30
  },
  {
    "name": "Alice",
    "age": 25
  }
]
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ # try displaying as a table
tom@scout:~/sandbox/playgrounds/fx_play$ cat data.json | fx . table
SyntaxError: SyntaxError: (anonymous): Line 21:22 Unexpected token } (and 4 more errors) ; # <-- why?

[antonmedv]

This is because the new version is written in Go. And the original was written in nodejs. Now npm version is in here:
https://github.com/antonmedv/fx/tree/master/npm