Export Examples¶

Practical recipes for exporting directory structures. For a per-format reference, see Export Formats.

Exporting to Each Format¶

recursivist export --format md     # structure.md
recursivist export --format json   # structure.json
recursivist export --format html   # structure.html
recursivist export --format txt    # structure.txt
recursivist export --format svg    # structure.svg
recursivist export --format rst    # structure.rst

Several at once:

recursivist export --format "md json html"

Statistics in Exports¶

recursivist export --format md --sort-by-loc
recursivist export --format html --sort-by-size
recursivist export --format json --mtime                         # show mtime, keep order
recursivist export --format txt --sort-by-loc --size --mtime     # sort by LOC, show all three

A Markdown export with --sort-by-loc:

# 📂 my-project (1262 lines)

- 📄 `README.md` (124 lines)
- 📄 `setup.py` (65 lines)
- 📄 `requirements.txt` (18 lines)
- 📂 **src** (1055 lines)
  - 📄 `main.py` (245 lines)
  - 📄 `utils.py` (157 lines)
  - 📂 **tests** (653 lines)
    - 📄 `test_main.py` (412 lines)
    - 📄 `test_utils.py` (241 lines)

Output Location and Filename¶

recursivist export --format md --output-dir ./docs                 # ./docs/structure.md
recursivist export --format json --prefix my-project                # my-project.json
recursivist export --format html --output-dir ./docs --prefix tree  # ./docs/tree.html

Filtered and Depth-Limited Exports¶

# Exclude directories and extensions
recursivist export --format md --exclude node_modules --exclude .git --exclude build --exclude-ext .pyc --exclude-ext .log

# Top-level overview only
recursivist export --format md --depth 1

# Export a subdirectory directly
recursivist export src --format html --prefix source-structure

# Full paths (handy for JSON consumed by other tools)
recursivist export --format json --full-path

Processing JSON with jq¶

Export to JSON with metrics, then analyze with jq. With a detail flag, each file is an object carrying path, loc, and/or size:

recursivist export --format json --prefix structure --sort-by-loc --size

# Ten files with the most lines of code
jq -r '.structure | .. | objects | select(has("_files")) | ._files[]
       | select(type=="object" and has("loc")) | [.loc, .path] | @tsv' \
  structure.json | sort -nr | head -10

# Count files by extension
jq -r '.structure | .. | objects | select(has("_files")) | ._files[]
       | select(type=="object") | (.path | split(".") | .[-1]) | ascii_downcase' \
  structure.json | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr

Including a Structure in Documentation¶

# Generate a Markdown tree and prepend it to a README section
recursivist export --format md --exclude node_modules --exclude .git --prefix structure --sort-by-loc

{
  echo "# Project Structure"
  echo
  cat structure.md
} > STRUCTURE.md