simple-CLI-builder 0.3

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CLI builder

A simple class to ease up the process of building applications run in a terminal. For the most part, it only offers a python class which will load predefined commands, parse input, ensure the user inputs the command properly, and finally features a prebuilt "help" command which will display the name, description, and syntax of all predefined functions.

Documentation

Creates a class:

from simple_CLI_builder import *

app = CLI()

Load predefined functions

from a json file:

from simple_CLI_builder import *

app = CLI()
app.json_to_lookup(defined_functions.json)

where defined_functions.json:

{
    "commands": [
        {
            "name": str,
            "description": str,
            "syntax": str,
            "min_args": int,
            "max_args": int,
            "defined_flags": str
        }
    ]
}

Only the name field is required. Not including the other fields will have their values defaulted to None.

If you would like to not use a .json and manually populate the table for whatever god forsaken reason you can create a list of objects identical to the ones seen in the .json file and call app.populate_lookup(list) instead of app.json_to_lookup(path)

Parsing input

from simple_CLI_builder import *

app = CLI()
app.json_to_lookup(defined_functions.json)

while True:
    app.parse_input(input("> "))

Upon input, the property app.current_command will be populated with an instance of the class Executed_Command() where the class is defined as follows:

class Executed_Command():
    def __init__(self):
        self.name = None
        self.args = []
        self.flags = []
        self.properties = None

The command's arguements can be accessed through app.current_command.property. For example:

from simple_CLI_builder import *

app = CLI()
app.json_to_lookup(defined_functions.json)

app.parse_input("command arg1 arg2")
print(app.current_command.args)

would return:

['arg1', 'arg2']

This works with flags as well.

To access the predefined properties of the command (such as its name, description, min and max number of args, etc) being called use app.current_command.properties.property. For example:

from simple_CLI_builder import *

app = CLI()
app.json_to_lookup(defined_functions.json)

app.parse_input("command arg1 arg2")
print(app.current_command.properties.name)

would return the name value of the current command found in the previously defined commands (same as the ones found in defined_functions.json)

From here, a simple switch statement can be used to provide functionality to the command. For example:

from simple_CLI_builder import *

app = CLI()
app.json_to_lookup(defined_functions.json)

while True:
    app.parse_input(input("> "))

    match app.current_command.properties.name:
        case 'help':
            app.help() # Prints all command names along with their syntax
                       # This is a predefined function in the class

        case 'hello':
            print('Hello, world!')