tree-cli

A flexible CLI tool to display directory structures in a tree format, built with TypeScript and TDD.

Features

• 🌳 Recursive Tree View: Visualizes your folder structure.
• 🙈 Gitignore Support: Automatically respects .gitignore rules (hides ignored files, marks ignored folders).
• 📏 Max Leaf Control: Skips displaying folder contents if the file count exceeds a threshold (--maxLeaf).
• 🔗 Symlink Handling: Safely skips symbolic links to prevent infinite loops.
• 📊 Summary Statistics: Optional summary of folders, files, and skipped items.

Installation & Build

1. Install dependencies:

   npm install

2. Build the project:

   npm run build

Usage

Run the tool using node:

node dist/index.js [target-directory] [options]

Options:

• --summary, -s: Show a summary at the end (Total files, folders, skipped items).
• --maxLeaf=N, -m N: Collapse folders containing more than N files.

Examples

Show current directory with summary:

node dist/index.js . -s

Show a specific folder, limiting large directories:

node dist/index.js ./src -m 5

Manual Testing Guide

Follow these steps to verify all features manually.

1. Verification Setup

Create a playground directory with various edge cases:

# Create directories
mkdir -p verify_test/src verify_test/large verify_test/ignored_folder

# Create files
echo "console.log('hello')" > verify_test/src/index.ts
echo "export const x = 1" > verify_test/src/utils.ts
echo "secret" > verify_test/ignored_folder/secret.txt
echo "ignored_folder" > verify_test/.gitignore

# Create a "large" folder (5 files)
for i in {1..5}; do echo "content" > verify_test/large/file$i.txt; done

# Create a symbolic link
ln -s ../verify_test/src verify_test/src_link

2. Test Cases

Test A: Standard Tree & Gitignore Run:

node dist/index.js verify_test --summary

Expectation:

• ignored_folder should be marked as 🚫 (ignored).
• src_link should NOT be visible (symlinks skipped).
• Summary should be displayed.

Test B: Max Leaf Threshold Run:

node dist/index.js verify_test --maxLeaf=3 --summary

Expectation:

• large folder should be marked 📚 (too many files) because it has 5 files (> 3).
• Its contents (file1.txt...) should NOT be listed.

3. Cleanup

rm -rf verify_test

Running Automated Tests

The project includes a comprehensive test suite using Jest.

npm test