Glion CLI

The glion command — development and production runtime for Glion MLLP applications.

What it does

@glion/cli provides the glion binary that runs Glion applications. A single-file MLLP app exported as export default new Mllp() becomes a running server with glion dev (for development with live reload and a terminal UI) or glion start (for production with graceful shutdown and structured logs). glion send is a client utility that sends one HL7v2 message over MLLP and prints the acknowledgment. The CLI reads configuration from a glion.config.ts file when present or infers defaults when not.

Install

npm install @glion/cli

Use

Define your app in a single file:

// glion.app.ts
import { parseHL7v2 } from "@glion/hl7v2";
import { Mllp } from "@glion/mllp";

export default new Mllp()
  .parser(parseHL7v2)
  .on("ADT^A01", handleAdmit)
  .on("ORU^R01", handleResult);

Add the two scripts to package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "glion dev",
    "start": "glion start"
  }
}

Run npm run dev during development. Run npm start in production.

API

defineConfig(config)

Identity helper for glion.config.ts that gives TypeScript inference over the configuration schema:

// glion.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "@glion/cli/config";

export default defineConfig({
  entry: "./src/app.ts",
  port: 2575,
  hostname: "0.0.0.0",
});

GlionConfig

Type exported from @glion/cli/config:

Commands

glion dev

Runs the app with live reload. Watches the entry file and any paths listed in watch, cold-restarts on change, and renders a live terminal UI showing request/response counts, uptime, and error summaries. Falls back to log-only mode when stdout is not a TTY (CI, piped output).

glion start

Runs the app in production. Emits JSON-line events to stdout for log aggregators, handles SIGTERM with a graceful drain (gracefulCloseMs, default 5000), and exits cleanly when the drain completes.

glion send

Sends a single HL7v2 message over MLLP, prints the acknowledgment, and exits. It is a client utility for the dev loop — sending a message to a running server and reporting how it responds — rather than part of the server runtime.

glion send [<file>] [flags]

The message is read from <file>, or from stdin when <file> is omitted or is -. It is parsed and re-serialized to its canonical, CR-delimited form before transmission, so editor line endings are normalized. Whether the message is valid is the receiver's call — it answers with a NAK — so glion send does not pre-validate.

--local resolves the target from the server this project defines: it reads hostname and port from glion.config.ts, mapping a wildcard bind address such as 0.0.0.0 to loopback.

glion send adt.hl7 --host 127.0.0.1 --port 2575
cat adt.hl7 | glion send --port 2575 --json
glion send adt.hl7 --local

Output adapts to the destination: a terminal receives a human-readable exchange view, while a pipe (or --json) receives a single JSON line. The exit code reports the result.

TLS targets are not supported; glion send connects in plaintext.

Zero-config mode

Both commands work without a glion.config.ts when the app file is at ./glion.app.ts at the project root. The TUI shows a zero-config badge to indicate no config was loaded. Create a glion.config.ts when you need custom ports, TLS, or additional watch paths.

Cross-runtime invocation

The glion binary ships with #!/usr/bin/env node. Bun and Deno require explicit opt-in: