Welcome to the start of module 9 on building CLI applications in Go. In this module, we're going to take a look at some of the most popular third-party packages for building CLI applications when it comes to the Go programming language. And we're going to do so by building out a brand new project.

Project Overview

This project is going to be a content management system that we're going to use a command line interface in order to manage. The content that you're going to want to manage is pretty much going to be anything that you want it to be.

In my case, I'm going to be building a simple CMS system to manage blog posts. The reason for this is because it's the most applicable to any other data set. However, when it comes to your own implementation, I recommend choosing a data set that is going to be more interesting to you. Be it:

• To manage a library of video games that you've played or owned
• A data set that's going to help you in your own personal career

For example, if it was me building this system for my own personal use cases, I would build a CMS in order to manage my content catalogue - so any videos for YouTube that I have planned, scripted, or in production setting.

Benefits of Custom CLI Applications

This is one of the benefits of being able to build your own command line applications, as you can simply create one in order to solve your own problems.

Learning Approach

I mentioned that we're going to be building the CMS system throughout this course, but that was kind of a fib. Instead, it's actually going to be you that's building this CMS system, and instead, I'm going to be showing you the packages and the way to use them in order to apply it to your own project.

However, as I mentioned, I will be building a CMS system that's going to be managing blog posts, which you can use as a reference. But for the most part, it's going to come down to you and the homework that I set.

Getting Started - Project Setup

Therefore, in order to get started, let's go ahead and create a new CMS project on our machines, which I'm going to do using the mkdir cms command. You can call this anything you want, whether it's:

• CMS for blog posts
• CMS for video game libraries
• CMS for your own data type that you're interested in

I'll be showing you all of the ways that you can effectively create a CMS to manage any type of content that you want.

Step 1: Create Project Directory

In my case, I'm just going to go ahead and call this cms, and I'm going to go ahead and initialize it using the go mod init command:

mkdir cms
cd cms
go mod init github.com/dreamsofcode-io/cli-cms

Note: I'm going to call this CLI CMS, just in case I ever make a CMS in the future.

Step 2: Create Main File

Let's go ahead and now create a main.go file:

package main

func main() {
    println("hello CMS")
}

Step 3: Initialize Git Repository

Now that that's done, let's go ahead and initialize our Git repository:

git init
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"

What's Next

Okay, with our code now committed, we're ready to move on to the next lesson, where we're going to start taking a look at the COBRA package, which I've mentioned a few times throughout this course.

COBRA is what we're going to use to define our CLI interface, allowing us to have:

• Sub commands
• POSIX based flags (which are slightly different from the flag package we've seen already)

In any case, once you're ready to move on, I'll see you in the first lesson.