entrypoint2 0.0.1

easy to use command-line interface for python modules, fork of entrypoint

entrypoint2 is an easy to use command-line interface for python modules, fork of entrypoint

Links:

• home

• html documentation

• pdf documentation

Background

There are tons of command-line handling modules but none of them can generate a CLI interface for a very simple function like this without duplicating the existing code and without making the function from other modules unusable:

def add(one, two=4, three=False):
        ''' description
        one: description
        two: description
        three: description
        '''

Best solution I could find is entrypoint, but there is no link to development site, so I forked the project. The only big disadvantage of entrypoint: it destroys the function signature, therefore the function can not be called from other modules.

Goals

• the decorated function should have the same behavior as without the entrypoint2 decorator

• generate CLI parameters from function signature

• generate CLI documentation from python documentation

• boolean parameters should be toggle flags

• generate short flags from long flags: --long -> -l

• automatic –version flag

Similar projects

• entrypoint

• plac

• baker

• argh

• opster

Features

Additional features over original entrypoint:

• function signature is preserved so it can be called both from command-line and external module

• function name, doc and module are preserved so it can be used with sphinx autodoc

• sphinx autodoc documentation style is supported: :param x: this is x

• automatic --version flag, which prints version variable from the current module (__version__, VERSION, ..)

• automatic --debug flag, which turns on logging

• short flags are generated automatically (e.g. --parameter -> -p)

• unit tests

Known problems:

• Python 3 is not supported

• there are more decorators in the module inherited from original entrypoint, but only @entrypoint is tested.

• Autocompletion is not supported

Basic usage

Example:

from entrypoint2 import entrypoint

__version__ = '3.2'

@entrypoint
def add(one, two=4, three=False):
    ''' This function adds three numbers.

    one: first number to add
    two: second number to add
    '''

Generated help:

$ python -m entrypoint2.examples.hello --help
usage: hello.py [-h] [-t TWO] [--three] [--version] [--debug] one

This function adds two number.

positional arguments:
  one                first number to add

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  -t TWO, --two TWO  second number to add
  --three
  --version          show program's version number and exit
  --debug            set logging level to DEBUG

Printing version:

$ python -m entrypoint2.examples.hello --version
3.2

Installation

General

• install setuptools or pip

• install the program:

if you have setuptools installed:

# as root
easy_install entrypoint2

if you have pip installed:

# as root
pip install entrypoint2

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
sudo easy_install entrypoint2

Uninstall

# as root
pip uninstall entrypoint2