Using the SO CLI #

This is a tutorial about how to use the SO CLI.

Installing#

It’s easy to install so. However, the way to install it depends on your OS.

macOS, BSD and GNU/Linux

Warning

Stack Overflow CLI is not tested on macOS or BSD descendants, only on GNU/Linux and Windows.

Assuming that you have Python (3.6 or newer required due to F-strings), including PyInstaller and everything in the SO CLI requirements.txt, you can install so by using this command (works for and executes BASH):

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Tyler887/so/main/install.sh)"

This command may install Python if it is missing.

If you are unable to execute this command, copy and paste the installation script from Stack Apps.

Microsoft Windows

Note

SO CLI is not yet avaliable via Windows Package Manager. If popularity grows, I’ll submit SO CLI to the Microsoft WinGet community repository for review when the project is ready to be avaliable to the public.

To install so, launch PowerShell (recommended Windows Powershell 5.1 or PowerShell 7) and run:

Invoke-Expression (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://github.com/Tyler887/so/raw/main/install.ps1')

Other

If you do not use any listed OS, make sure support for Python on that OS is avaliable. This is because your OS will not have any Python binaries if it is not supported.

To compile, use PyInstaller:

Unix-like

pip3 install pyinstaller
python -m PyInstaller --console --noupx --name so ./StackOverflowCommandLine.py

Windows-like

py -m pip install pyinstaller
py -m PyInstaller --console --noupx --name so .\StackOverflowCommandLine.py

Using it#

Todo

The SO CLI uses the Stack Exchange API, which requires you to approve the SO CLI when you try to use it.

If you run SO CLI without authenticating to the API, this error will appear:

Error

(x) Error: Please authenticate to the API using: so login
    The Stack Overflow CLI uses the Stack Exchange API, so you need
    to login to use the SO CLI.

    If you do not have a Stack Overflow account, you can safely
    remove this program from your system: sudo rm /usr/bin/so

So run so login. Already logged in? If you moved to another account or just deleted your Stack Overflow profile, you need to run so logout to remove the app from your SEN account.

so or so help will list commands.

so feed <type> allows you to view the RSS feed of questions/answers. It is useful to check this out everyday so you can answer questions that still do not have an answer.

For more info, refer to the rest of the docs.