Question

I’m writing a python script which I would like to be able to both call from the command line and import as a library function.
Ideally the command line options and the function should use the same set of default values.
What is the best way to allow me to reuse a single set of defaults in both places?

Here’s the current code with duplicate defaults.

from optparse import OptionParser

def do_stuff(opt1="a", opt2="b", opt3="c"):
    print opt1, opt2, opt3

if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = OptionParser()
    parser.add_option("--opt1", default="a")
    parser.add_option("--opt2", default="b")
    parser.add_option("--opt3", default="c")
    #parser.set_defaults(opt1="a")

    options, args = parser.parse_args()

    do_stuff(*args, **vars(options))

Answer 1

I’d handle it by introspecting the function of interest to set options and defaults appropriately. For example:

import inspect
from optparse import OptionParser
import sys

def do_stuff(opt0, opt1="a", opt2="b", opt3="c"):
    print opt0, opt1, opt2, opt3

if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = OptionParser()
    args, varargs, varkw, defaults = inspect.getargspec(do_stuff)
    if varargs or varkw:
      sys.exit("Sorry, can't make opts from a function with *a and/or **k!")
    lend = len(defaults)
    nodef = args[:-lend]
    for a in nodef:
      parser.add_option("--%s" % a)
    for a, d in zip(args[-lend:], defaults):
      parser.add_option("--%s" % a, default=d)

    options, args = parser.parse_args()
    d = vars(options)
    for n, v in zip(nodef, args):
      d[n] = v

    do_stuff(**d)