Demonstrates how to programatically call the Azure CLI. The pattern below only works for synchronous invocation where each command is only called after the other completes.

azure-cli-automation.js

//requires azure and async modules
var util = require('util');
var cli = require('./node_modules/azure-cli/lib/cli');
var async = require('async');
var called = 0;

function initializeCli() {
  //setup the cli
  cli.exit = function () {
    //don't exit
  }
}

// args must be cli commands followed by a callback of the form function(error,result)
// each time this is called it takes over the log function for the cli, 
// so invokeCli should only get called after the previous invocation finishes
// note: the cli is async (not blocking), however there's no context passed when the log function is called that could correlate
// back to the caller, thus the only way to ensure that is to serialize the calls.
function invokeCli() {
  var newArgs = ["node", "azure"];
  var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);
  args = newArgs.concat(args.slice(0, arguments.length -1), "--json");
  var callback = arguments[arguments.length-1];
  //http://stackoverflow.com/users/374773/dandean
  if (!(Object.prototype.toString.call(callback) == '[object Function]')) {
    var error = "Last parameter must be a callback";
  throw error;    
  }

  //only works if you ensure to call invokeCli in a serial fashion.
  cli.output.log = function(level, type, data) {
    if(type === "table") {
      callback(undefined, data);
    }
  }
  
  cli.output.error = function(message) {
    callback(message);
  }
  cli.parse(args);
}


//example usage

//call this once
initializeCli();

console.log("fetching sites, vm locations, and vm images\n");

//using async here to ensure calls are serialized and avoid the christmas tree of callbacks
async.waterfall([
  function(callback) {
    invokeCli("site", "list",callback) 
  },
  function(results,callback) {
    console.log(results);
    invokeCli("vm", "location", "list", callback);
  },
  function(results,callback) {
    console.log(results);
    invokeCli("vm", "image", "list", callback);
  },
  function(results,callback) {
    console.log(results);
    invokeCli("does_not_exist", callback);
  },
  function(results,callback) {
    console.log("I should not run because the previous function failed");
  },
  function(results, callback) {
    console.log(results);
    callback(null, 'done');
  }], 
  function(err, results) {
    if(err)
      console.log("Error:" + err);
  }
);