6.20.5.4 Examples

Here are a few examples of extending the optparse module.

First, let's change the option-parsing to be case-insensitive:

from optparse import Option, OptionParser, _match_abbrev

# This case-insensitive option parser relies on having a
# case-insensitive dictionary type available.  Here's one
# for Python 2.2.  Note that a *real* case-insensitive
# dictionary type would also have to implement __new__(),
# update(), and setdefault() -- but that's not the point
# of this exercise.

class caseless_dict (dict):
    def __setitem__ (self, key, value):
        dict.__setitem__(self, key.lower(), value)

    def __getitem__ (self, key):
        return dict.__getitem__(self, key.lower())

    def get (self, key, default=None):
        return dict.get(self, key.lower())

    def has_key (self, key):
        return dict.has_key(self, key.lower())

class CaselessOptionParser (OptionParser):

    def _create_option_list (self):
        self.option_list = []
        self._short_opt = caseless_dict()
        self._long_opt = caseless_dict()
        self._long_opts = []
        self.defaults = {}

    def _match_long_opt (self, opt):
        return _match_abbrev(opt.lower(), self._long_opt.keys())

if __name__ == "__main__":
    from optik.errors import OptionConflictError

    # test 1: no options to start with
    parser = CaselessOptionParser()
    try:
        parser.add_option("-H", dest="blah")
    except OptionConflictError:
        print "ok: got OptionConflictError for -H"
    else:
        print "not ok: no conflict between -h and -H"
    
    parser.add_option("-f", "--file", dest="file")
    #print `parser.get_option("-f")`
    #print `parser.get_option("-F")`
    #print `parser.get_option("--file")`
    #print `parser.get_option("--fIlE")`
    (options, args) = parser.parse_args(["--FiLe", "foo"])
    assert options.file == "foo", options.file
    print "ok: case insensitive long options work"

    (options, args) = parser.parse_args(["-F", "bar"])
    assert options.file == "bar", options.file
    print "ok: case insensitive short options work"

And two ways of implementing ``required options'' with optparse.

Version 1: Add a method to OptionParser which applications must call after parsing arguments:

import optparse

class OptionParser (optparse.OptionParser):

    def check_required (self, opt):
      option = self.get_option(opt)

      # Assumes the option's 'default' is set to None!
      if getattr(self.values, option.dest) is None:
          self.error("%s option not supplied" % option)

parser = OptionParser()
parser.add_option("-v", action="count", dest="verbose")
parser.add_option("-f", "--file", default=None)
(options, args) = parser.parse_args()

print "verbose:", options.verbose
print "file:", options.file
parser.check_required("-f")

Version 2: Extend Option and add a required attribute; extend OptionParser to ensure that required options are present after parsing:

import optparse

class Option (optparse.Option):
    ATTRS = optparse.Option.ATTRS + ['required']

    def _check_required (self):
        if self.required and not self.takes_value():
            raise OptionError(
                "required flag set for option that doesn't take a value",
                 self)

    # Make sure _check_required() is called from the constructor!
    CHECK_METHODS = optparse.Option.CHECK_METHODS + [_check_required]

    def process (self, opt, value, values, parser):
        optparse.Option.process(self, opt, value, values, parser)
        parser.option_seen[self] = 1

class OptionParser (optparse.OptionParser):

    def _init_parsing_state (self):
        optparse.OptionParser._init_parsing_state(self)
        self.option_seen = {}

    def check_values (self, values, args):
        for option in self.option_list:
            if (isinstance(option, Option) and
                option.required and
                not self.option_seen.has_key(option)):
                self.error("%s not supplied" % option)
        return (values, args)

parser = OptionParser(option_list=[
    Option("-v", action="count", dest="verbose"),
    Option("-f", "--file", required=1)])
(options, args) = parser.parse_args()

print "verbose:", options.verbose
print "file:", options.file
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