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

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

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 :)

• 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 💪

Note
this is the development version of nu_plugin_explore, thus it does not require Nushell to be installed with a stable version.

let's setup the Nushell dependencies locally, because nu-plugin and nu-protocol are not release in version 0.xx.1, only the stable 0.xx.0 😮

• clone the Nushell repository somewhere
• setup the dependencies

make dev-deps

there are three ways to do it:

• 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

• define the install root, e.g. $env.CARGO_HOME or /some/where/plugins/

let install_root: path = ...

• build and install the plugin

cargo install --path . --root $install_root

• register the plugin in Nushell

nu --commands $"register ($install_root | path join "bin" $name)"

• do not forget to restart Nushell

Warning
this is a very alpha software

• download nushell/nupm
• load the nupm module

use /path/to/nupm/

• run the install process

nupm install --path .

• get some help

help nu_plugin_explore

• run the command

open Cargo.toml | nu_plugin_explore

you can find it in default.nuon.

you can copy-paste it in your config.nu and set $env.explore_config 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"))

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 😋

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

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

• 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
• detect if a string is of a particular type, path, URL, ...

• 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