Trying to implement a CLI using argparse without writing my own parser if possible. Basically I would like to use the command line in order to invoke different methods sequentially in a program, i.e.:
my_program.py --doA --doB --doA --doA
I've seen threads with good ideas on how to obtain ordered arguments, but I suppose I would end up with a list like this ['doA', 'doB', 'doA', 'doB'] where I would still need to parse the arguments myself.
Is there any way to exploit tools in argparse in order to help execute these commands in order? Thanks!
Here's a parser that will collect these arguments repeatedly and in order:
import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('--doA', dest='cmd', const='doA', action='append_const');
parser.add_argument('--doB', dest='cmd', const='doB', action='append_const');
Test:
args = parser.parse_args('--doA --doB --doA --doA'.split())
print(args)
Result:
Namespace(cmd=['doA', 'doB', 'doA', 'doA'])
do something:
for action in args.cmd:
print('action:', action)
Result:
action: doA
action: doB
action: doA
action: doA
If I had defined:
def doA(*args):
# do something
pass
and used const=doA, then the args.cmd list would be
Namespace(cmd=[doA, doB, ...])
and we could write
for action in args.cmd:
action(arguments)
argparse docs has something like this for subparses and the set_default command.
If these are the only arguments you accept this would be over kill. But if there are other options that need argparse this would fit in. But accepting a
parser.add_argument('--cmd', nargs='*', ...)
would be fine. It could use choices to restrict the input strings, and even a type function to translate the strings into function objects.