cli-command-parser 2023.10.14

CLI Command Parser

CLI Command Parser is a class-based CLI argument parser that defines parameters with descriptors. It provides the tools to quickly and easily get started with basic CLIs, and it scales well to support even very large and complex CLIs while remaining readable and easy to maintain.

The primary goals of this project:

• Make it easy to define subcommands and actions in an clean and organized manner

• Allow for inheritance so that common parameters don’t need to be repeated

• Make it easy to handle common initialization tasks for all actions / subcommands once

• Reduce the amount of boilerplate code that is necessary for setting up parsing and handling argument values

Example Program

from cli_command_parser import Command, Option, main

class Hello(Command, description='Simple greeting example'):
    name = Option('-n', default='World', help='The person to say hello to')
    count: int = Option('-c', default=1, help='Number of times to repeat the message')

    def main(self):
        for _ in range(self.count):
            print(f'Hello {self.name}!')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

$ hello_world.py --name Bob -c 3
Hello Bob!
Hello Bob!
Hello Bob!

$ hello_world.py -h
usage: hello_world.py [--name NAME] [--count COUNT] [--help]

Simple greeting example

Optional arguments:
  --name NAME, -n NAME        The person to say hello to (default: 'World')
  --count COUNT, -c COUNT     Number of times to repeat the message (default: 1)
  --help, -h                  Show this help message and exit

Installing CLI Command Parser

CLI Command Parser can be installed and updated via pip:

$ pip install -U cli-command-parser

There are no required dependencies. Support for formatting wide characters correctly in help text descriptions can be included by adding wcwidth to your project’s requirements, and/or by installing with optional dependencies:

$ pip install -U cli-command-parser[wcwidth]

Python Version Compatibility

Python versions 3.8 and above are currently supported. The last release of CLI Command Parser that supported 3.7 was 2023-04-30. Support for Python 3.7 officially ended on 2023-06-27.

When using Python 3.8, some additional packages that backport functionality that was added in later Python versions are required for compatibility.

To use the argparse to cli-command-parser conversion script with Python 3.8, there is a dependency on astunparse. If you are using Python 3.9 or above, then astunparse is not necessary because the relevant code was added to the stdlib ast module. If you’re unsure, you can install cli-command-parser with the following command to automatically handle whether that extra dependency is needed or not:

$ pip install -U cli-command-parser[conversion]

Links

• Documentation: https://dskrypa.github.io/cli_command_parser/

• Example Scripts: https://github.com/dskrypa/cli_command_parser/tree/main/examples

• PyPI Releases: https://pypi.org/project/cli-command-parser/

• Source Code: https://github.com/dskrypa/cli_command_parser

• Issue Tracker: https://github.com/dskrypa/cli_command_parser/issues