Example 1 : Manual definition of subcommands

For instance, consider the following code for mycommand.py:

import sys
from argdispatch import ArgumentParser

def foo(args):
    """A function associated to subcommand `foo`."""
    print("Doing interesting stuff")
    sys.exit(1)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = ArgumentParser()
    subparser = parser.add_subparsers()

    subparser.add_function(foo)
    subparser.add_module("bar")
    subparser.add_executable("baz")

     parser.parse_args()

With this simple code:

• mycommand.py foo -v --arg=2 is equivalent to the python code foo(['-v', '--arg=2']);

• mycommand.py bar -v --arg=2 is equivalent to python -m bar -v --arg=2;

• mycommand.py baz -v --arg=2 is equivalent to baz -v --arg=2.

Then, each function, module or binary does whatever it wants with the arguments.

Example 2 : Automatic definition of subcommands

With programs like git, if a git-foo binary exists, then calling git foo --some=arguments is equivalent to git-foo --some=arguments. The following code, in myprogram.py copies this behaviour:

import sys
from argdispatch import ArgumentParser

if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = ArgumentParser()
    subparser = parser.add_subparsers()

    subparser.add_submodules("myprogram")
    subparser.add_prefix_executables("myprogram-")

    parser.parse_args()

With this program, given that binary myprogram-foo and python module myprogram.bar.__main__.py exist:

• myprogram foo -v --arg=2 is equivalent to myprogram-foo -v --arg=2;

• myprogram bar -v --arg=2 is equivalent to python -m myprogram.bar -v --arg=2.

Documentation

The complete documentation is available on readthedocs.

To compile it from source, download and run:

cd doc && make html