Agrh, argparse!
===============

Did you ever say "argh" trying to remember the details of optparse or argparse
API? If yes, this package may be useful for you. It provides a very simple
wrapper for argparse with support for hierarchical commands that can be bound
to modules or classes. Argparse can do it; argh makes it easy.

In a nutshell
-------------

Here's a list of features that `argh` adds to `argparse`:

* mark a function as a CLI command and specify its arguments before the parser
  is instantiated;
* nesed commands made easy: no messing with subparsers (though they are of
  course used under the hood);
* infer agrument type from the default value;
* infer command name from function name;
* add an alias root command ``help`` for the ``--help`` argument;
* enable passing unwrapped arguments to certain functions instead of a
  `argparse.Namespace` object.

`Argh` is fully compatible with `argparse`. You can mix `argh`-agnostic and
`argh`-aware code. Just keep in mind that `argh.dispatch` does some extra
work that a custom dispatcher may not do.

Installation
------------

    $  pip install argh

Example
-------

A very simple application with one command::

    @command
    def echo(text='hello'):
        print text
   
    parser = ArghParser()
    parser.add_commands([echo])

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        parser.dispatch()

The powerful API of `argparse` is also available::

    @arg('text', default='hello world', nargs='+', help='The message')
    def echo(args):
        print args.text

The approaches can be safely combined.

Documentation
-------------

See the `complete documentation`_ for details. If it's not complete enough,
feel free to ask your questions or submit bugs.

.. _complete documentation: http://packages.python.org/argh

Author
------

Originally written by Andrey Mikhaylenko in 2010.

See file `AUTHORS` for a complete authors list of this application.

Please feel free to submit patches, report bugs or request features:

    http://bitbucket.org/neithere/argh/issues/

Here's the discussion group:

    http://groups.google.com/group/argh-users

Real-life usage
---------------

Among applications that use `argh` are Tool_, OrgTool_, Watchdog_, Poni_ and
more. Well, there's probably no need to keep a complete and up-to-date list.
Still, please let me know anyway if you use `argh`_ in your project. I'll be
glad to know. :-)

.. _Tool: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/tool
.. _OrgTool: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/orgtool
.. _Watchdog: https://github.com/gorakhargosh/watchdog/blob/master/watchdog/watchmedo.py
.. _Poni: https://github.com/melor/poni/commit/14e8ccbb50e9e17b95a2f2a0d2cd0af5d90ca22b

Licensing
---------

Argh is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published
by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

Argh is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
along with Argh.  If not, see <http://gnu.org/licenses/>.
