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Terminal string styling done right

colors.js is currently the most popular string styling module, but it has serious deficiencies like extending String.prototype which causes all kinds of problems. Although there are other ones, they either do too much or not enough.

Chalk is a clean and focused alternative.

screenshot

Why

• Doesn't extend String.prototype

• Expressive API

• Clean and focused

• Auto-detects color support

• Actively maintained

• Used by 150+ modules

Install

Install with npm: npm install --save chalk

Example

Chalk comes with an easy to use composable API where you just chain and nest the styles you want.

var chalk = require('chalk');

// style a string
console.log(  chalk.blue('Hello world!')  );

// combine styled and normal strings
console.log(  chalk.blue('Hello'), 'World' + chalk.red('!')  );

// compose multiple styles using the chainable API
console.log(  chalk.blue.bgRed.bold('Hello world!')  );

// nest styles
console.log(  chalk.red('Hello', chalk.underline.bgBlue('world') + '!')  );

// pass in multiple arguments
console.log(  chalk.blue('Hello', 'World!', 'Foo', 'bar', 'biz', 'baz')  );

You can easily define your own themes.

var chalk = require('chalk');
var error = chalk.bold.red;
console.log(error('Error!'));

API

chalk.<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.

Multiple arguments will be separated by space.

chalk.enabled

Color support is automatically detected, but you can override it.

chalk.supportsColor

Detect whether the terminal supports color.

Can be overridden by the user with the flags --color and --no-color.

Used internally and handled for you, but exposed for convenience.

chalk.styles

Exposes the styles as ANSI escape codes.

Generally not useful, but you might need just the .open or .close escape code if you're mixing externally styled strings with yours.

var chalk = require('chalk');

console.log(chalk.styles.red);
//=> {open: '\x1b[31m', close: '\x1b[39m'}

console.log(chalk.styles.red.open + 'Hello' + chalk.styles.red.close);

chalk.stripColor(string)

Strip color from a string.

Can be useful in combination with .supportsColor to strip color on externally styled text when it's not supported.

Example:

var chalk = require('chalk');
var styledString = fromExternal();

if (!chalk.supportsColor) {
    chalk.stripColor(styledString);
}

Styles

General

• reset

• bold

• italic

• underline

• inverse

• strikethrough

Text colors

• black

• red

• green

• yellow

• blue

• magenta

• cyan

• white

• gray

Background colors

• bgBlack

• bgRed

• bgGreen

• bgYellow

• bgBlue

• bgMagenta

• bgCyan

• bgWhite

License

MIT © Sindre Sorhus

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