rich-click

Format click help output nicely with Rich.

• Click is a "Python package for creating beautiful command line interfaces".
• Rich is a "Python library for rich text and beautiful formatting in the terminal".

The intention of rich-click is to provide attractive help output from click, formatted with rich, with minimal customisation required.

Screenshots

Native click help	With rich-click

Installation

You can install rich-click from the Python Package Index (PyPI) with pip or equivalent.

python -m pip install rich-click

Usage

To use rich-click, import it instead of click but under the same namespace:

import rich_click as click

That's it. Then continue to use click as you would normally.

The intention is to maintain most / all of the normal click functionality and arguments. If you spot something that is missing once you start using the plugin, please create an issue about it.

Command groups and sorting

rich-click gives functionality to list subcommands in groups, printed as separate panels. It accepts a list of commands which means you can also choose a custom sorting order.

For example, you can produce something that looks like this:

To do this, set rich_click.core.COMMAND_GROUPS.

In this example, we create two groups of commands for the base command of mytool. Any subcommands not listed will automatically be printed in a panel at the end labelled "Commands" as usual.

click.core.COMMAND_GROUPS = {
    "mytool": [
        {
            "name": "Commands for uploading",
            "commands": ["sync", "upload"],
        },
        {
            "name": "Download data",
            "commands": ["get", "fetch", "download"],
        },
    ]
}

If you omit name it will use Commands (can be configured with COMMANDS_PANEL_TITLE, see below).

If you use nested subcommands, you can specify multiple base paths using the base dictionary keys:

click.core.COMMAND_GROUPS = {
    "mytool": ["commands": ["sync", "auth"]],
    "mytool sync": [
        {
            "name": "Commands for uploading",
            "commands": ["sync", "upload"],
        },
        {
            "name": "Download data",
            "commands": ["get", "fetch", "download"],
        },
    ],
    "mytool auth":[{"commands": ["login", "logout"]}],
}

Customisation

You can customise most things that are related to formatting.

For example, to limit the maximum width of the help output to 100 characters:

click.core.MAX_WIDTH = 100

To print the option flags in a different colour, use:

click.core.STYLE_OPTION = "magenta"

Full list of config options

# Default colours
STYLE_OPTION = "bold cyan"
STYLE_SWITCH = "bold green"
STYLE_METAVAR = "bold yellow"
STYLE_USAGE = "yellow"
STYLE_USAGE_COMMAND = "bold"
STYLE_DEPRECATED = "red"
STYLE_HELPTEXT_FIRST_LINE = ""
STYLE_HELPTEXT = "dim"
STYLE_METAVAR = "bold yellow"
STYLE_OPTION_HELP = ""
STYLE_OPTION_DEFAULT = "dim"
STYLE_REQUIRED_SHORT = "red"
STYLE_REQUIRED_LONG = "dim red"
STYLE_OPTIONS_PANEL_BORDER = "dim"
ALIGN_OPTIONS_PANEL = "left"
STYLE_COMMANDS_PANEL_BORDER = "dim"
ALIGN_COMMANDS_PANEL = "left"
MAX_WIDTH = None # Set to an int to limit to that many characters

# Fixed strings
DEPRECATED_STRING = "(Deprecated) "
DEFAULT_STRING = " [default: {}]"
REQUIRED_SHORT_STRING = "*"
REQUIRED_LONG_STRING = " [required]"
OPTIONS_PANEL_TITLE = "Options"
COMMANDS_PANEL_TITLE = "Commands"

# Behaviours
SHOW_ARGUMENTS = False

Contributing

Contributions and suggestions for new features are welcome, as are bug reports! Please create a new issue or better still, dive right in with a pull-request.

Credits

This package was put together hastily by Phil Ewels (@ewels), but the hard work was really done by Will McGugan (@willmcgugan) who not only is the author of Rich but also wrote the original code that this package is based on.