README.md

auto-argparse

Install

For the current release:

pip install auto-argparse

For the latest version from GitHub:

pip install git+https://github.com/neighthan/auto-argparse

Usage

Replace something like

from argparse import ArgumentParser
from typing import List

def func(x: int, things: List[int], y: str="test"):
    """
    A very useful function.

    It does many things.
    :param x: the first param
    :param things: variable length!
    :param y: the last param
    """

def parse_args():
    description = "A very useful function.\n\nIt does many things."
    parser = ArgumentParser(description=description)
    # have to replicate all of `func`s arguments here, including their types, defaults,
    # and help strings. And make sure to update this if you ever change `func`!
    parser.add_argument("-x", "--x", type=int, required=True, help="the first param")
    parser.add_argument(
      "-t", "--things", nargs="+", type=int, required=True, help="variable length!"
    )
    parser.add_argument("-y", "--y", type=str, help="the last param")
    return parser.parse_args()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    func(**vars(parse_args()))

with

from typing import List
from auto_argparse import parse_args_and_run

def func(x: int, things: List[int], y: str="test"):
    """
    A very useful function.

    It does many things.
    :param x: the first param
    :param things: variable length!
    :param y: the last param
    """

if __name__ == "__main__":
    parse_args_and_run(func)

See the docstring for auto_argparse.make_parser for more details.

Supported Types

The following types should be fully supported, but any annotation T should work if T(cli_string) gives the desired value, where cli_string is the string entered at the command line.

• int
• float
• str
• bool
• List[T], Sequence[T] where T is any of (int, float, str) or as described in the paragraph above
• Optional[T] where T could additionally be List or Sequence. Note that there's no way to explicitly enter a None value from the command-line though it can be the default value.

Alternatives

• defopt is a more mature library which has the same aims as auto-argparse but with a slightly different implementation (e.g. auto-argparse adds short names, makes all arguments keyword-only, and puts the part of the doc string for each argument into its help string)