feat(projects): offer a connection URL in create:sql / create:nosql prompts

[Gawtier]

What

Interactive projects:create:sql / projects:create:nosql now open with an optional connection URL prompt — Database connection URL (leave blank to enter the details manually): (MongoDB wording on nosql). Paste a URL and the field prompts (dialect/name/host/port/user/password, Mongo SRV) are skipped; leave it blank and today's field-by-field flow runs unchanged.

This brings the CLI to parity with the web onboarding, which offers the same Form/URL choice. Until now the connection URL was reachable only via the -c flag (prompter: null), so a human running the interactive create could never paste a connection string.

How it works

Scoped to the two commands — the shared options are untouched, so init / projects:create / demo prompts are unchanged:

• Each command overrides databaseConnectionURL with a leading prompter and a per-engine validator (validateSqlConnectionUrl / validateMongoConnectionUrl in src/services/projects/create/options.ts). No new flag, no extra "choose a method" question.
• The field prompts get when: skipWhenConnectionUrl, so they are skipped once a URL is answered.
• The URL option carries an exclusive list mirroring the field options': passing any DB field flag (-d/-n/-h/-p/-u/--databasePassword, --mongoDBSRV) drops the URL question, so scripted/non-TTY usage never faces a new question to hang on.
• The prompt is masked (prompter.secret, new): the URL embeds the database password, and optionToInquirer only masks options whose name matches /(password|secret)/. Without it the credentials were echoed on screen and left in the terminal scrollback — a regression against the field-by-field flow, whose databasePassword prompt is masked. A * mask keeps a failed paste distinguishable from the blank answer.
• The answer is trimmed at the source (filter, new — inquirer runs it before when/validate). A pasted URL routinely drags whitespace along, and the untrimmed value reaches getDialect() during prompting, so a leading space used to make the database schema question disappear. getCommandOptions normalizes the -c flag path the same way, and a blank answer becomes undefined so the DB config falls back to the field values.

Behaviour change for scripted usage (-c)

getCommandLineOptions runs an option's validate on values coming from the command line too, so the new validators also gate the -c flag. projects:create:sql -c mariadb://… now fails at parse time where it used to be accepted.

This is deliberate. runAuthenticated creates the project on Forest before testing the database connection, so a URL the toolbelt cannot interpret either leaves an orphan project behind, or — worse — succeeds all the way and hands the user a generated project whose package.json ships no driver, broken at the first npm start. Failing in the parser, with a message that says what to do, is the point.

What is rejected, and why:

• mariadb:// — getDialect() maps it to the mysql dialect, so the generated project ships mysql2, while @forestadmin/datasource-sql derives mariadb from the URL scheme and needs the mariadb driver. Use mysql://. (The dumper does have mariadb support, but getDialect() never returns that dialect; making it reachable is a separate change — dbDialect flows into the project meta sent to the API, whose v1 dialect choices only know mysql.)
• Anything outside postgres://, postgresql://, mysql://, mssql:// (SQL) and mongodb://, mongodb+srv:// (Mongo) — pg://, mysql2://, sqlite:// and friends all end up with no dialect, hence no driver in the generated project.

What is not rejected: uppercase schemes. getDialect() was matching them case-sensitively and returning null, which is what actually broke Postgres://…. Both Sequelize and @forestadmin/datasource-sql parse the URL with a URL parser that normalizes the scheme, so Postgres://user:MyPass@host/db connects and generates a working project — getDialect() is now case-insensitive (on a lowercased copy: the credentials the URL carries are case-sensitive), in src/services/projects/create/options.ts and in src/services/schema/update/database.js, which had the same bug on the schema:update path. The mongo validator is the exception and still requires lowercase, because the mongodb driver itself throws Invalid scheme, expected connection string to start with "mongodb://".

projects:create (v1, forest-express) is deliberately left untouched: adding a new hard failure to a legacy path costs more than the consistency is worth.

Error messages

Every rejection used to read "the scheme must be lowercase", including mariadb://, pg://, sqlite:// and a URL with a leading space. Each case now says what is actually wrong: unsupported scheme (listing the supported ones), URL truncated after ://, not a URL at all, and mariadb:// pointing at mysql://.

Tested

• options.test.ts — the helpers: skip predicate (incl. blank), scheme validation per engine, each exact message, uppercase accepted on SQL and refused on Mongo, getDialect() case-insensitivity leaving the credentials alone, and a guard against a scheme resolving on Object.prototype.
• connection-url-prompt.test.ts (new) — the command test helper stubs inquirer and returns canned answers, so nothing proved the field prompts were actually skipped. This one drives the real inquirer against the real command options and asserts which questions the user is asked (URL → fields skipped, blank → fields asked, nosql likewise), that the pasted credentials never reach the screen, and that the URL is stored trimmed.
• database.unit.test.js — getDialect() on the schema:update path, case-insensitive and non-destructive.
• abstractProjectCreateCommand.unit.test.ts — a blank URL normalizes to undefined and the connection uses the field values; a URL pasted with whitespace is trimmed before the dialect is derived.
• sql.test.js / nosql.test.js — interactive URL path (project created, dialect derived from the URL), field-flags path (no URL question in the prompt list), and the blank-URL round-trip against the test database.
• tsc + lint clean.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Note

Add connection URL prompt to create:sql and create:nosql project commands

• Adds a masked, validated connection URL prompt as the first option in both create:sql and create:nosql; when a URL is supplied, the individual database field prompts (host, port, user, password, name, dialect) are skipped
• Adds shared validators (options.ts): validateSqlConnectionUrl accepts PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MSSQL schemes (rejects MariaDB with guidance), and validateMongoConnectionUrl accepts mongodb and mongodb+srv (requires lowercase scheme)
• Adds trimConnectionUrl filter and skipWhenConnectionUrl predicate so blank URL answers fall back to the existing field prompts
• Extends option-parser.optionToInquirer to treat explicitly secret options as masked password prompts and forward configured filters to Inquirer
• Makes dialect detection case-insensitive in getDialect and Database.getDialect by lowercasing only the scheme comparison while preserving the original URL value
• Behavioral Change: connection URLs with uppercase or mixed-case schemes now resolve correctly; MariaDB URLs are explicitly rejected in the SQL prompt with a message directing users to MySQL

^{Macroscope summarized 826d38c.}

[macroscopeapp]

🟠 High src/abstract-project-create-command.ts:223

Whitespace-only -c values still suppress all database field prompts, so this normalization leaves dbConfig without either a connection URL or dialect and the command exits with “Missing database dialect.” Normalize the value before getCommandLineOptions runs its interactive skip logic, or trim it in skipWhenConnectionUrl.

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In file @src/abstract-project-create-command.ts around line 223:

Whitespace-only `-c` values still suppress all database field prompts, so this normalization leaves `dbConfig` without either a connection URL or dialect and the command exits with “Missing database dialect.” Normalize the value before `getCommandLineOptions` runs its interactive skip logic, or trim it in `skipWhenConnectionUrl`.