Enabling a console for a Ruby app

Question

I'm trying to add a console to my Ruby cli application (much like the Rails console), but I can't seem to find a solution that does what I need:

• Colorization & syntax highlighting
• Ability to pass in variables or use the current context

I'd like to use pry, but I can't figure out how to disable the code context from being printed out at the start of the session. I'd like it to immediately start the session without printing anything out besides the prompt.

Here's what currently gets printed when the pry session starts:

Frame number: 0/8

From: <file_path> @ line <#> <Class>#<method>:

    71: def console
    72:   client_setup
    73:   puts "Console Connected to #{@client.url}"
    74:   puts 'HINT: The @client object is available to you'
    75: rescue StandardError => e
    76:   puts "WARNING: Couldn't connect to #{@client.url}"
    77: ensure
    78:   Pry.config.prompt = proc { "> " }
    79:   binding.pry
 => 80: end
>

Here's what I want:

>

I've also tried a few other solutions, but here's my problems with each:

• IRB: No colorization, doesn't seem customizable
• ripl: No colorization or syntax highlighting

Any help here would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

What I ended up doing is defining a pretty simple/empty class to bind to:

class Console
  def initialize(client)
    @client = client
  end
end

Then in my console method:

Pry.config.prompt = proc { '> ' }
Pry.plugins['stack_explorer'] && Pry.plugins['stack_explorer'].disable!
Pry.start(Console.new(@client))

Disabling the stack_explorer prevented it from printing the Frame number info, and inside the Pry session, I can access @client as expected.