Can I generate a string of help messages for derived commands?

[jeffka11]

I use the derive feature to create an object with subcommands. I also have a web page, where I'd like to display the help command for the object and each subcommand. Is there a way to generate the help messages as strings so I can print them on the web page?

[epage]

It would be something like:

#[derive(Parser)]
struct Cli {
}

fn main() {
    use clap::CommandFactory as _;
    let mut command = Cli::command();
    command.build();
    for sub in command.get_subcommands() {
        let styled_str = sub.render_help();
    }
}

See

• https://docs.rs/clap/latest/clap/struct.Command.html#method.render_help
• https://docs.rs/clap/latest/clap/builder/struct.StyledStr.html

You can get the plaintext output of styled_str or you can render it to ANSI escape codes. I don't have an HTML converter for that but I do have anstyle-svg for SVG. If you want to generate styled HTML, you could mimic what anstyle-svg does. I might be open to it being contributed back to the anstyle repo.