How does npm draw the dependency tree?
npm uses the Unicode box drawing characters (U+2500-2800) to draw the pretty lines of the tree.
To draw a similar tree in your own application, the best route is probably to use the same module that npm itself uses – archy.
var archy = require('archy');var s = archy({ label : 'beep', nodes : [ 'ity', { label : 'boop', nodes : [ { label : 'o_O', nodes : [ { label : 'oh', nodes : [ 'hello', 'puny' ] }, 'human' ] }, 'party\ntime!' ] } ]});console.log(s);Outputs
beep├── ity└─┬ boop ├─┬ o_O │ ├─┬ oh │ │ ├── hello │ │ └── puny │ └── human └── party time!
For list your folders and files you can use tree-cli:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/tree-cli
Just install:
npm install -g tree-cliAnd use inside your folder:
tree -L 2, -d
You could also use console2 which does almost the same thing as archy does, but gives you useful additional features like improved stack traces, object inspection and more:
Full disclosure: I'm the author of the repository