Command line argument when starting the CLI

[wsande]

I would like to pass a command line argument to my CLI when starting it - the IP address of the server to connect to. Something like this (running in Windows PowerShell):

> python .\cm_cli.py 10.46.100.7

In the main loop, I have some code to grab the argument before even starting the command parser:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
    ip_addr = sys.argv[1]
    app = CM_CLI()
    app.prompt = 'CM-CLI > '
    sys.exit(app.cmdloop())

But when I run this, I get an error:

10.46.100.7 is not a recognized command, alias, or macro

How do I pass the IP address like this and have the command parser ignore it?

[kmvanbrunt]

cmd2.Cmd.__init__ has a slightly misleading parameter called allow_cli_args. You need to set that to False if you are processing your own command line args.

:param allow_cli_args: if True, then :meth:cmd2.Cmd.__init__ will process command line arguments as either commands to be run or, if -t or --test are given, transcript files to run. This should be set to False if your application parses its own command line arguments.

[wsande]

Thanks! That allowed me to get the command line arg and use it. But I still get a message when the cli starts (after the welcome message) :
' is not a recognized command, alias, or macro'

Is there a way to prevent that?

[kmvanbrunt]

Can you post some code that reproduces this?

[wsande]

Sure, See below. And here is a sample run.

> python .\sample_cli_params.py 127.0.0.2
Connecting to server at 127.0.0.2
127.0.0.2 is not a recognized command, alias, or macro
(Cmd) show fruit

import cmd2
from typing import List


fruit_choices = {}
def fruit_completer(self) -> List[cmd2.CompletionItem]:
    global fruit_choices
    fruit_choices = {1:'apple (Fuji)', 2:'orange(Mandarin)', 3:'banana (Chiquita)', 'all':'(show all fruit)' }
    return [cmd2.CompletionItem(item_id, description) for item_id, description in fruit_choices.items()]


show_parser = cmd2.Cmd2ArgumentParser()
show_subparsers = show_parser.add_subparsers(title='subcommands', help='subcommand help')
parser_show_fruit = show_subparsers.add_parser('fruit', help='show fruit help')
fruit_arg = parser_show_fruit.add_argument('fruit',  choices_provider=fruit_completer, metavar='ID',  descriptive_header='',
                                           help="enter a fruit ID or 'all'")

class SAMPLE_CLI(cmd2.Cmd):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.allow_cli_args = False

    def show_fruit(self, args):
        fruit_completer(self)
        if args.fruit == 'all':
            self.poutput("showing all fruit:")
            for fruit in list(fruit_choices.keys()):
                if fruit != 'all':
                    self.poutput("fruit #{}: {}".format(fruit, fruit_choices[fruit]))
        else:
            self.poutput("You chose fruit #{}: {}".format(args.fruit, fruit_choices[int(args.fruit)]))


    parser_show_fruit.set_defaults(func=show_fruit)

    @cmd2.with_argparser(show_parser)
    def do_show(self, args):
        func = getattr(args, 'func', None)
        if func is not None:
            func(self, args)
        else:
            self.do_help('show')


if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
    ip_addr = sys.argv[1]
    print('Connecting to server at {}'.format(ip_addr))
    app = SAMPLE_CLI()
    sys.exit(app.cmdloop())

[kmvanbrunt]

allow_cli_args needs to be set when calling cmd2.Cmd.__init__().

Change SAMPLE_INIT.__init__() to the following.

class SAMPLE_CLI(cmd2.Cmd):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(allow_cli_args=False)

    ...

[wsande]

Thanks!