Question

tldnr: given a function, is there a way to automatically create an ArgumentParser from its signature?

I’ve got a bunch of functions that I’d like to expose to the command line. So basically, a module:

 def copy(foo, bar, baz):
    ...
 def move(from, to):
    ...
 def unlink(parrot, nomore=True):
    ...

 if __name__ == '__main__':
     argparse stuff

which can be called from the command line like this:

 python commands.py move spam ham
 python commands.py unlink --parrot Polly

Although this is pretty straightforward to implement, there’s a lot of wiring involved:

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(...)
subparsers = parser.add_subparsers()
...
c = subparsers.add_parser('unlink', description='Unlink a parrot')
c.add_argument('--parrot', help='parrots name', required=True)
c.add_argument('--nomore', help='this parrot is no more', action='store_true')
...
c = subparsers.add_parser('move', description='Move stuff')
...

and so on, for each function. The worst thing, should function arguments change (and they do), the argparse stuff needs to be synchronized manually.

It would be much nicer if the functions could provide argparse stuff for themselves, so that the main code would be like:

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(...)
subparsers = parser.add_subparsers()

copy.register(subparsers)
move.register(subparsers)
unlink.register(subparsers)
...

I thought of something along these lines:

@args(
    description='Unlink a parrot',
    parrot={'required':True, 'help':'parrots name'},
    nomore={'action': 'store_true', 'help': 'this parrot is no more'}
)
def unlink(parrot, nomore=True):
    ...

My questions:

• is there a library that does something like this?
• if no, is it possible to write such a decorator, and how?
• is there a other/better way to implement what I want?

Upd:

plac appears to be the solution. Here’s how to do what I want with plac:

commands module: cmds.py:

import plac

@plac.annotations(
    foo=('the foo thing'),
    bar=('the bar thing'),
    fast=('do a fast copy', 'flag')
)
def copy(foo, bar, fast=False):
    """Copy some foo to bar."""
    pass
        
@plac.annotations(
    parrots=('parrots names'),
    nomore=('these parrots are no more', 'flag'),
    repeat=('repeat n times', 'option', 'r', int)
)
def unlink(nomore=False, repeat=1, *parrots):
    """Unlink some parrots."""
    pass

#more commands...

# export commands so that plac knows about them
commands = 'copy', 'unlink'

and here’s the main module:

import plac
import cmds

plac.call(cmds)

Quite neat if you ask me.

Answer 1

Have you tried plac?

An example in docs:

# dbcli.py
import plac
from sqlalchemy.ext.sqlsoup import SqlSoup

@plac.annotations(
    db=plac.Annotation("Connection string", type=SqlSoup),
    header=plac.Annotation("Header", 'flag', 'H'),
    sqlcmd=plac.Annotation("SQL command", 'option', 'c', str, metavar="SQL"),
    delimiter=plac.Annotation("Column separator", 'option', 'd'),
    scripts=plac.Annotation("SQL scripts"),
    )
def main(db, header, sqlcmd, delimiter="|", *scripts):
    "A script to run queries and SQL scripts on a database"
    yield 'Working on %s' % db.bind.url

    if sqlcmd:
        result = db.bind.execute(sqlcmd)
        if header: # print the header
            yield delimiter.join(result.keys())
        for row in result: # print the rows
            yield delimiter.join(map(str, row))

    for script in scripts:
        db.bind.execute(open(script).read())
        yield 'executed %s' % script

if __name__ == '__main__':
    for output in plac.call(main):
        print(output)

Output:

usage: dbcli.py [-h] [-H] [-c SQL] [-d |] db [scripts [scripts ...]]

A script to run queries and SQL scripts on a database

positional arguments:
  db                    Connection string
  scripts               SQL scripts

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -H, --header          Header
  -c SQL, --sqlcmd SQL  SQL command
  -d |, --delimiter |   Column separator