Cliopts Library

The Cliopts Library is a Python library designed to simplify the process of parsing command-line arguments. It provides a straightforward and intuitive API, reducing the amount of code required for CLI argument parsing.

Installation

To install the Cliopts Library, run the following command in your terminal (cmd, bash, PowerShell, etc.):

pip install cliopts

Usage

To use the library in your code, follow these steps:

1. Import the CliArguments class from the cliopts module:

   from cliopts import CliArguments

2. Create an instance of CliArguments and pass a list of argument names or a dictionary of argument names and their shorthand notations, along with optional parameters such as options_desc and version.

   Using a list of options:

   args = CliArguments(
       options=["filename", "count", "verbose"],
       options_desc={
           "filename": "Specify the filename",
           "count": "Specify the count",
           "verbose": "Enable verbose output"
       },
       version="v1.0.0"
   )

   Using a dictionary of options with shorthand notations:

   args = CliArguments(
       options={
           "filename": "f",
           "count": "c",
           "verbose": "v"
       },
       options_desc={
           "filename": "Specify the filename",
           "count": "Specify the count",
           "verbose": "Enable verbose output"
       },
       version="v1.0.0"
   )

3. Access the parsed command-line arguments as a dictionary using the to_dict() method:

   print(args.to_dict())

   The to_dict() method returns a dictionary containing the parsed arguments.

4. Run your Python script and pass command-line arguments using the specified options and their shorthand notations:

   py test.py --filename="filename.txt" --count=5 --verbose=True
   py test.py -f "filename.txt" -c 5 -v True

   Replace test.py with the name of your script file and filename.txt with the desired value for the argument.

Example

Let's consider an example to illustrate how to use the Cliopts Library. Suppose we are creating a Python script that takes a filename, count, and a verbose flag as input from the command line.

In script.py file:

from cliopts import CliArguments

# Define the desired arguments: filename, count, verbose
args = CliArguments(
    options={
        "filename": "f",
        "count": "c",
        "verbose": "v"
    },
    options_desc={
        "filename": "Specify the filename",
        "count": "Specify the count",
        "verbose": "Enable verbose output"
    },
    version="v1.0.0"
)

print(args.to_dict())

In the command line:

py script.py --filename='/files/filename.txt' --count=5 --verbose=True
py script.py -f '/files/filename.txt' -c 5 -v True

The output of args.to_dict() will be:

{
    "filename": "/files/filename.txt",
    "count": 5,
    "verbose": True
}

CliArgument class params

options

• Type: Iterable[str] | dict[str, str]
• Description: A list or dictionary of command-line options. If using a dictionary, the keys are the full option names and the values are their shorthand notations.

options_desc

• Type: dict[str, str]
• Optional: Yes
• Description: A dictionary with descriptions for each option. Defaults to an empty dictionary.

version

• Type: str
• Optional: Yes
• Description: The version of the program. Defaults to None.

help

• Type: (dict[str, str]) -> Any
• Optional: Yes
• Description: A function to display help information. This function takes options_desc as its argument. If not provided, the default help function is triggered utilizing options_desc.

throw_on_invalid_args

• Type: bool
• Optional: Yes
• Description: Whether to throw an error on invalid arguments. Defaults to True.

name

• Type: str
• Optional: Yes
• Description: The name of the program. Defaults to "python-program".

desc

• Type: str
• Optional: Yes
• Description: The description of the program. Defaults to None.

Default Help Function Output

If the --help flag is used, the default help function displays the following information:

Usage: python-program [options]

Options:
    filename : Specify the filename
    count : Specify the count
    verbose : Enable verbose output

--version : Show version

Attach Version

If you want your script to return a version number when prompted with --version, you can easily achieve that by passing a version string as the version parameter when creating an instance of CliArguments.

Example in script.py file:

from cliopts import CliArguments

args = CliArguments(
    options=["filename", "count", "verbose"],
    version="v1.0.0"
)

You can now check the script version using the following command:

py script.py --version

The output will be v1.0.0, matching the version parameter.

Contact the Developer

For any inquiries or assistance, you can contact the developer at [email protected]. Feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback you may have.