chalk
Terminal string styling done right
Highlights
Expressive API
Highly performant
Ability to nest styles
Auto-detects color support
Doesn't extend
String.prototype
Clean and focused
Actively maintained
Used by ~23,000 packages as of December 31, 2017
Install
Usage
Chalk comes with an easy to use composable API where you just chain and nest the styles you want.
Easily define your own themes:
Take advantage of console.log string substitution:
API
chalk.<style>[.<style>...](string, [string...])
<style>[.<style>...](string, [string...])
Example: chalk.red.bold.underline('Hello', 'world');
Chain styles and call the last one as a method with a string argument. Order doesn't matter, and later styles take precedent in case of a conflict. This simply means that chalk.red.yellow.green
is equivalent to chalk.green
.
Multiple arguments will be separated by space.
chalk.enabled
Color support is automatically detected, as is the level (see chalk.level
). However, if you'd like to simply enable/disable Chalk, you can do so via the .enabled
property.
Chalk is enabled by default unless explicitly disabled via the constructor or chalk.level
is 0
.
If you need to change this in a reusable module, create a new instance:
chalk.level
Color support is automatically detected, but you can override it by setting the level
property. You should however only do this in your own code as it applies globally to all Chalk consumers.
If you need to change this in a reusable module, create a new instance:
Levels are as follows:
All colors disabled
Basic color support (16 colors)
256 color support
Truecolor support (16 million colors)
chalk.supportsColor
Detect whether the terminal supports color. Used internally and handled for you, but exposed for convenience.
Can be overridden by the user with the flags --color
and --no-color
. For situations where using --color
is not possible, add the environment variable FORCE_COLOR=1
to forcefully enable color or FORCE_COLOR=0
to forcefully disable. The use of FORCE_COLOR
overrides all other color support checks.
Explicit 256/Truecolor mode can be enabled using the --color=256
and --color=16m
flags, respectively.
Styles
Modifiers
reset
bold
dim
italic
(Not widely supported)underline
inverse
hidden
strikethrough
(Not widely supported)visible
(Text is emitted only if enabled)
Colors
black
red
green
yellow
blue
(On Windows the bright version is used since normal blue is illegible)magenta
cyan
white
gray
("bright black")redBright
greenBright
yellowBright
blueBright
magentaBright
cyanBright
whiteBright
Background colors
bgBlack
bgRed
bgGreen
bgYellow
bgBlue
bgMagenta
bgCyan
bgWhite
bgBlackBright
bgRedBright
bgGreenBright
bgYellowBright
bgBlueBright
bgMagentaBright
bgCyanBright
bgWhiteBright
Tagged template literal
Chalk can be used as a tagged template literal.
Blocks are delimited by an opening curly brace ({
), a style, some content, and a closing curly brace (}
).
Template styles are chained exactly like normal Chalk styles. The following two statements are equivalent:
Note that function styles (rgb()
, hsl()
, keyword()
, etc.) may not contain spaces between parameters.
All interpolated values (chalk`${foo}`
) are converted to strings via the .toString()
method. All curly braces ({
and }
) in interpolated value strings are escaped.
256 and Truecolor color support
Chalk supports 256 colors and Truecolor (16 million colors) on supported terminal apps.
Colors are downsampled from 16 million RGB values to an ANSI color format that is supported by the terminal emulator (or by specifying {level: n}
as a Chalk option). For example, Chalk configured to run at level 1 (basic color support) will downsample an RGB value of #FF0000 (red) to 31 (ANSI escape for red).
Examples:
chalk.hex('#DEADED').underline('Hello, world!')
chalk.keyword('orange')('Some orange text')
chalk.rgb(15, 100, 204).inverse('Hello!')
Background versions of these models are prefixed with bg
and the first level of the module capitalized (e.g. keyword
for foreground colors and bgKeyword
for background colors).
chalk.bgHex('#DEADED').underline('Hello, world!')
chalk.bgKeyword('orange')('Some orange text')
chalk.bgRgb(15, 100, 204).inverse('Hello!')
The following color models can be used:
rgb
- Example:chalk.rgb(255, 136, 0).bold('Orange!')
hex
- Example:chalk.hex('#FF8800').bold('Orange!')
keyword
(CSS keywords) - Example:chalk.keyword('orange').bold('Orange!')
hsl
- Example:chalk.hsl(32, 100, 50).bold('Orange!')
hsv
- Example:chalk.hsv(32, 100, 100).bold('Orange!')
hwb
- Example:chalk.hwb(32, 0, 50).bold('Orange!')
ansi16
ansi256
Windows
If you're on Windows, do yourself a favor and use cmder
instead of cmd.exe
.
Origin story
colors.js used to be the most popular string styling module, but it has serious deficiencies like extending String.prototype
which causes all kinds of problems and the package is unmaintained. Although there are other packages, they either do too much or not enough. Chalk is a clean and focused alternative.
Related
chalk-cli - CLI for this module
ansi-styles - ANSI escape codes for styling strings in the terminal
supports-color - Detect whether a terminal supports color
strip-ansi - Strip ANSI escape codes
strip-ansi-stream - Strip ANSI escape codes from a stream
has-ansi - Check if a string has ANSI escape codes
ansi-regex - Regular expression for matching ANSI escape codes
wrap-ansi - Wordwrap a string with ANSI escape codes
slice-ansi - Slice a string with ANSI escape codes
color-convert - Converts colors between different models
chalk-animation - Animate strings in the terminal
gradient-string - Apply color gradients to strings
chalk-pipe - Create chalk style schemes with simpler style strings
terminal-link - Create clickable links in the terminal
Maintainers
License
MIT
Last updated