clickdump

Serialize Click commands and groups.

Installation

pip install clickdump

Usage

import click
import clickdump

@click.command()
@click.option("-v", "--verbose", count=True, help="Verbosity")
@click.option("--name", default="world", help="Who to greet")
@click.argument("files", nargs=-1)
def cli(name, verbose, files):
    """A simple CLI tool."""

# Serialize to dict
data = clickdump.dump(cli)

# Serialize to JSON string
json_str = clickdump.dumps(cli, indent=2)

Groups and subcommands

@click.group()
@click.option("--debug/--no-debug", default=False)
def cli(debug):
    """A CLI with subcommands."""

@cli.command()
@click.option("--output", "-o", default="out.txt")
@click.argument("src")
def build(output, src):
    """Build the project."""

# Subcommand with parent for full program name
data = clickdump.dump(build, parent=cli)
# -> prog="cli build"

JSON Schema

Output follows the same schema as argdump ($schema: https://niwrap.dev/argdump/schema-v1.json).

Features

• All Click parameter types: options, arguments, flags, counts, choices, paths, files
• Nested groups with subparsers (click.Group)
• Type introspection: builtins, Path, Choice, File, IntRange, FloatRange, DateTime, UUID, Tuple, and callable converters
• Click-specific extensions: hidden, envvar, prompt, show_default, is_flag, count, multiple, flag_value
• Program name resolution via parent tree traversal for nested subcommands
• Mutual exclusion and argument group serialization
• Environment metadata ($env) for reproducibility

Options

# Exclude environment metadata
clickdump.dump(cmd, include_env=False)

# Exclude hidden options
clickdump.dump(cmd, include_hidden=False)

# Compute full program name from parent group
clickdump.dump(subcmd, parent=root_group)

# Override the root program name
clickdump.dump(subcmd, parent=root_group, prog="mycli")

Limitations

• This is a serialize-only library (no load/loads equivalent).
• Lambda and closure type converters cannot be fully serialized and will have serializable: false.
• Custom click.ParamType subclasses that are not standard built-in types may be marked as unknown.

License

MIT