I am implementing a command line program which has interface like this:
cmd [GLOBAL_OPTIONS] {command [COMMAND_OPTS]} [{command [COMMAND_OPTS]} ...]
I have gone through the argparse documentation. I can implement GLOBAL_OPTIONS
as optional argument using add_argument
in argparse
. And the {command [COMMAND_OPTS]}
using Sub-commands.
From the documentation it seems I can have only one sub-command. But as you can see I have to implement one or more sub-commands. What is the best way to parse such command line arguments useing argparse
?
I came up with the same qustion, and it seems i have got a better answer.
The solution is we shall not simply nest subparser with another subparser, but we can add subparser following with a parser following another subparser.
Code tell you how:
parent_parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(add_help=False)
parent_parser.add_argument('--user', '-u',
default=getpass.getuser(),
help='username')
parent_parser.add_argument('--debug', default=False, required=False,
action='store_true', dest="debug", help='debug flag')
main_parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
service_subparsers = main_parser.add_subparsers(title="service",
dest="service_command")
service_parser = service_subparsers.add_parser("first", help="first",
parents=[parent_parser])
action_subparser = service_parser.add_subparsers(title="action",
dest="action_command")
action_parser = action_subparser.add_parser("second", help="second",
parents=[parent_parser])
args = main_parser.parse_args()