Aaargh An astonishingly awesome application argument helper
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Python library Python helper argument helper Argument

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Aaargh is an astonishingly awesome application argument helper.Aaargh is a Python module that makes building friendly command line applications really easy. Applications built with Aaargh provide a single executable with a subcommand for each exposed Python function. Each subcommand may have its own command line arguments. This is similar to the way version control systems provide many different commands using a single entry point. (Examples include bzr commit and git checkout).Aaargh is named after one of the castles in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The acronym Aaargh expands to an astonishingly awesome application argument helper, but omits a few letters to make it triple A.Aaargh works with both Python 2.6+ and Python 3.RationaleThe Python standard library contains the optparse, getopt, and argparse modules, and out in the wild you will find many alternative command line interface libraries stacked on top of these, such as Cliff, Cement, opster, plac, and many others. These libraries either separate the CLI part of your application from the actual code, force yet another API upon you, or even force you to hide your code in non-obvious framework constructs.This makes you scream aaargh. And, lo and behold, here it is!UsageAaargh delegates almost all of its work to the argparse module, which does a great job handling arguments and printing usage information. However, argparse is a bit verbose and cumbersome for many simple applications, so Aaargh lets application authors minimize boilerplate code by wrapping commonly used argparse features in a few non-intrusive decorators. Aaargh does not hide the argparse API, since the decorators have exactly the same API as their argparse counterparts. This is a deliberate design decision, and this is what makes Aaargh different from its many alternatives.The docstrings in the aaargh.py file contain all information you need to use Aaargh. Refer to the argparse documentation for information on specifying arguments, providing defaults, adding help texts, and so on.ExampleA simple command line application that exposes a few functions looks like this:#!/usr/bin/env pythonimport aaarghapp = aaargh.App(description="A simple greeting application.")# Application level arguments:app.arg('--name', help="Name of the person to greet", default="stranger")# Application level defaults:app.defaults(name="visitor") # overrides "stranger"@app.cmddef hello(name): # application level "name" argument is always passed print("Hello, world!")@app.cmd(name="hi", help="Say hi") # override subcommand name@app.cmd_arg('-r', '--repeat', type=int, default=1, help="How many times?")def say_hi(name, repeat): # both application and subcommand args for i in range(repeat): print("Hi, %s!" % name)@app.cmd@app.cmd_defaults(who="my friend") # overrides "visitor" for this command onlydef greetings(who): print("Greetings, %s." % who)if __name__ == '__main__': app.run()The command line interface for this application behaves like this:$ ./example.py helloHello, world!$ ./example.py hi --repeat=3Hi, visitor!Hi, visitor!Hi, visitor!$ ./example.py --helpusage: example.py {hello,hi,greetings} ...A simple greeting application.optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --name NAME Name of the person to greetSubcommands: {hello,hi,greetings} hello hi Say hi greetings$ ./example.py hi --helpusage: example.py hi optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -r REPEAT, --repeat REPEAT How many times?InstallationInstallation using pip is trivial, especially when using virtualenv:(yourenv) $ pip install aaarghNow verify that it works:(yourenv) $ python>>> import aaargh>>> help(aaargh)Product's homepage

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