Java CLI UI-design, frameworks, libraries and principles?

Question

I'm currently working on a small utility program that only requires a command line interface, and I started wondering if Java provided any standard way of creating the CLI, in a similar way that Swing and the likes exist for GUIs. I'm not really interested in command line parameters and parsing of them, but rather the command based interaction the user has with the program to use it. This is for the situations where GUI simply is unnecessary or not an option for using the program.

Googling the subject pretty much only results in tutorials on how to use BufferedReader and the likes to do rudimentary interaction with the user, aimed at people learning the basics of Java and writing simple UI that asks for name and prints "Hello World!" etc..

Are the any libraries that are focused on providing a good framework for implementing more complex CLI UI or is this really something that everyone implements in ad hoc manner for their own utilities?

Maybe someone knows of patterns for the implementation that were created back in time when not everything was graphical?

Answer 1

There is a project called JLine that provides cross-platform support for general command-line input handling:

http://jline.sourceforge.net/

More of a support library than a framework though.

Answer 2

I've used the apache commons CLI library in the past and has worked well for me: http://commons.apache.org/cli/

Answer 3

Try searching for CURSES and java, something like http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=curses+for+java . Long time ago CHARVA ( http://www.pitman.co.za/projects/charva/index.html ) looked nice.