Introducing @bramus/caniuse-cli, a CLI tool for “Can I Use …”

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Installation and Usage

You can install @bramus/caniuse-cli through NPM (or whatever package manager you are using).

npm i -g @bramus/caniuse-cli

Once installed, you can call caniuse on the command line. The passed in argument is your search term.

caniuse viewport-units

The package differs from other attempts at this by not only using caniuse-db but by also integrating @mdn/browser-compat-data. That means you can also query for things like the upcoming calc-size() or @property.

caniuse calc-size

caniuse @property

Because both datasets are stored locally, @bramus/caniuse-cli requires no live internet connection once installed.

Furthermore it also collapses the releases in the output table, just like the “CanIUse …” website does it.

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Source code

The source code is available on GitHub. PRs very welcome as this was thrown together in a jiffy, hacking on the original by @dsenkus.

One area I am specifically looking help for, is a way to provide an auto-update mechanism for the datasets. I think I have a solution for this, but I’m sure it could be done better – especially because my approach is limited to Node’s npm only.

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Spread the word

Feel free to repost one of the posts from social media to give them more reach, or link to this post from your own blog.

I scratched my own itch (again) and built a @caniuse CLI tool.

It differs from other attempts at this by also integrating @MozDevNet’s browser-compat-data + collapsing releases in the table (just like the website does).

⌨️npm i -g @bramus/caniuse-cli
🔗 https://t.co/Ocp3t9erEz pic.twitter.com/Ly6SPNkgKo

— Bramus (@bramus) September 9, 2024

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