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Christian Ameachi
Christian Ameachi

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Building a Simple Ticket Tracker CLI in Go

A lightweight, command-line alternative to complex ticketing systems.

Using golang and cobra-cli, I built a simple command-line interface for managing support tickets. Tickets are stored locally in a CSV file.

Introduction

As developers, we often find ourselves juggling multiple tasks, bugs, and feature requests. While tools like Jira, Trello, or GitHub Issues are powerful, sometimes you just need something simple, fast, and local to track your daily work without leaving the terminal.

That's why I built Ticket CLI—a simple command-line tool written in Go to track daily tickets and store them in a CSV file. No servers, no databases, just a binary and a text file.

The Tech Stack

For this project, I choose:

  • Go: For its speed, simplicity, and ability to compile into a single binary.
  • Cobra: The industry standard for building modern CLI applications in Go. It handles flag parsing, subcommands, and help text generation effortlessly.
  • Standard Library (encoding/csv): To keep dependencies low, I used Go's built-in CSV support for data persistence.

How It Works

The project follows a standard Go CLI structure:

ticket-cli/
├── cmd/            # Cobra commands (add, list, delete)
├── internal/       # Business logic
│   └── storage/    # CSV handling
└── main.go         # Entry point
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1. The Command Structure

Using Cobra, I defined commands like add, list, and delete. Here's a snippet of how the add command handles flags to create a new ticket:

// cmd/add.go
var addCmd = &cobra.Command{
    Use:   "add",
    Short: "Add a new ticket",
    Run: func(cmd *cobra.Command, args []string) {
        // default values logic...

        t := storage.Ticket{
            ID:          fmt.Sprintf("%d", time.Now().UnixNano()),
            Title:       flagTitle,
            Customer:    flagCustomer,
            Priority:    flagPriority,
            Status:      flagStatus,
            Description: flagDescription,
        }

        if err := storage.AppendTicket(t); err != nil {
            fmt.Println("Error saving ticket:", err)
            return
        }
        fmt.Println("Ticket saved with ID:", t.ID)
    },
}
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2. Data Persistence (The "Database")

Instead of setting up SQLite or a JSON store, I opted for CSV. It's human-readable and easy to debug. The internal/storage package handles reading and writing to tickets.csv.

// internal/storage/storage.go
func AppendTicket(t Ticket) error {
    // ... (file opening logic)
    w := csv.NewWriter(f)
    defer w.Flush()

    rec := []string{t.ID, t.Date, t.Title, t.Customer, t.Priority, t.Status, t.Description}
    return w.Write(rec)
}
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Installation & Usage

You can clone the repo and build it yourself:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/ticket-cli
cd ticket-cli
go mod tidy
go build -o ticket-cli .
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Adding a Ticket 

./ticket-cli add --title "Fix login bug" --priority high --customer "Acme Corp"
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Listing Tickets 

./ticket-cli list
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Filter by date 

./ticket-cli list --date 2025-11-15
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CSV Storage

A CSV file is created automatically at the Project directory, and it keeps getting updated, once a new ticket is added using the .ticket-cli add --flags

Columns : 

ID, Date, Title, Customer, Priority, Status, Description
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Future Improvements

This is just an MVP. Some ideas for the future include:

  • JSON/SQLite Storage: For more complex querying.
  • TUI (Text User Interface): Using bubbletea for an interactive dashboard.
  • Cloud Sync: Syncing tickets to a Gist or S3 bucket.

Conclusion

Building CLI tools in Go is a rewarding experience. Cobra makes the interface professional, and Go's standard library handles the rest. If you're looking for a weekend project, try building your own developer tools!

Check out the code on GitHub.

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