argparse: how to make group of options required only as group - python

I am using python2.7 and argparse for my script. I am executing script as below:
python2.7 script.py -a valuefora -b valueforb -c valueforc -d valueford
Now what I want is that,
if option -a is given, then only -b, -c, -d options should be asked.
In addition to above, I also want to make this group -a -b -c -d as a EITHER OR for -e i.e. ([-a -b -c -d] | -e )
Please correct me anywhere I am wrong.

Your best choice is to test for the presence of various combinations after parse_args and use parser.error to issue an argparse compatible error message. And write your own usage line. And make sure the defaults clearly indicate whether an option has been parsed or not.
If you can change the -a and -e options to command names like cmda or build, you could use subparsers. In this case you might define a command_a subparser that accepts -b, -c, and -d, and another command_e subparser that has none of these. This is closes argparse comes to 'required together' groups of arguments.
mutually exclusive groups can define something with a usage like [-a -b -c], but that just means -b cannot occur along with -a and -c. But there's nothing fancy about that mechanism. It just constructs a dictionary of such exclusions, and checks it each time it parses a new option. If there is a conflict it issues the error message and quits. It is not set up to handle fancy combinations, such as your (-e | agroup).
Custom actions can also check for the absence or presence of non-default values in the namespace, much as you would after parsing. But doing so during parsing isn't any simpler. And it raises questions about order. Do you want to handle -b -c -a the same way as -a -c -b? Should -a check for the presence of the others, or should -b check that -a has already been parsed? Who checks for the presence, or absence of -e.
The are a number of other stack questions about argparse groups, exclusive and inclusive, but I think these are the essential issues.

Related

Use ENV Variables as flags for python script in dockerfile? (Boolean Flags)

Lets say I have the following python script
import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument("--host", required=True)
parser.add_argument("--enabled", default=False, action="store_true")
args = parser.parse_args()
print("host: " + args.host)
print("enabled: " + str(args.enabled))
$ python3 test.py --host test.com
host: test.com
enabled: False
$ python3 test.py --host test.com --enabled
host: test.com
enabled: True
Now the script is used in a docker image and I want to pass the variables in docker run. For the host parameter it is quite easy
FROM python:3.10-alpine
ENV MY_HOST=default.com
#ENV MY_ENABLED=
ENV TZ=Europe/Berlin
WORKDIR /usr/src/app
COPY test.py .
CMD ["sh", "-c", "python test.py --host ${MY_HOST}"]
But how can I can make the --enabled flag to work? So when the/an ENV is unset or is 0 or off ore something, --enabled should be suppressed, otherwise it should be included in the CMD.
Is is possible without modify the python script?
For exactly the reasons you're showing here, I'd suggest modifying your script to be able to accept command-line options from environment variables. If you add a line
parser.set_defaults(
host=os.environ.get('MY_HOST'),
enabled=(os.environ.get('MY_ENABLED') == 'true')
)
then you can use docker run -e options to provide these values, without the complexity of trying to reconstruct the command line based on which options are and aren't present. (Also see Setting options from environment variables when using argparse.)
CMD ["./test.py"] # a fixed string, environment variables specified separately
docker run -e MY_HOST=example.com -e MY_ENABLED=true my-image
Conversely, you can provide the entire command line and its options when you run the container. (But depending on the context you might just be pushing the "how to construct the command" question up a layer.)
docker run my-image \
./test.py --host=example.com --enabled
In principle you can construct this using a separate shell script without modifying your Python script, but it will be somewhat harder and significantly less safe. That script could look something like
#!/bin/sh
TEST_ARGS="--host $MY_HOST"
if [ -n "$MY_ENABLED" ]; then
TEST_ARGS="$TEST_ARGS --enabled"
fi
exec ./test.py $TEST_ARGS
# ^^^^^^^^^^ without double quotes (usually a bug)
Expanding $TEST_ARGS without putting it in double quotes causes the shell to split the string's value on whitespace. This is usually a bug since it would cause directory names like /home/user/My Files to get split into multiple words. You're still at some risk if the environment variable values happen to contain whitespace or other punctuation, intentionally or otherwise.
There are safer but more obscure ways to approach this in shells with extensions like GNU bash, but not all Docker images contain these. Rather than double-check that your image has bash, and figure out bash array syntax, and write a separate script to do the argument handling, this is where I suggest handling it exclusively at the Python layer is a better approach.

How should I use extglob in Python fabric?

I am trying to use fabric (v2.6) to run some commands that make use of bash's extglob and dotglob.
When I run:
c.run(f"shopt -s extglob dotglob && rm -Rf {project_path}* !(.|..|.venv) && shopt -u extglob dotglob")
I get this error:
`bash: -c: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `('`
I am using the && because I found doing shopt -s extglob dotglob in a separate run call doesn't persist for the subsequent run calls. I'm pretty sure using && is enabling extglob and dotglob because when I do this:
`c.run("shopt -s extglob dotglob && shopt")`
It prints out the list of options and extglob and dotglob are both enabled.
Where am I going wrong here?
From the bash wiki:
extglob changes the way certain characters are parsed. It is necessary to have a newline (not just a semicolon) between shopt -s extglob and any subsequent commands to use it.
So you have to change your python code appropriately so that a newline is used instead of &&.
Or just do what the bash invocation does directly in python.
It seems extglob can't be used with Python Fabric unfortunately.
From the bash docs
extglob changes the way certain characters are parsed. It is necessary
to have a newline (not just a semicolon) between shopt -s extglob and
any subsequent commands to use it.
But from the Fabric docs
While Fabric can be used for many shell-script-like tasks, there’s a
slightly unintuitive catch: each run [...] has its own distinct shell session. This is required
in order for Fabric to reliably figure out, after your command has
run, what its standard out/error and return codes were.
Fortunately, a similar thing can be achieved using Bash's GLOBIGNORE shell variable instead
The GLOBIGNORE shell variable may be used to restrict the set of file
names matching a pattern. If GLOBIGNORE is set, each matching file
name that also matches one of the patterns in GLOBIGNORE is removed
from the list of matches. If the nocaseglob option is set, the
matching against the patterns in GLOBIGNORE is performed without
regard to case. The filenames . and .. are always ignored when
GLOBIGNORE is set and not null. However, setting GLOBIGNORE to a
non-null value has the effect of enabling the dotglob shell option, so
all other filenames beginning with a ‘.’ will match. To get the old
behavior of ignoring filenames beginning with a ‘.’, make ‘.*’ one of
the patterns in GLOBIGNORE. The dotglob option is disabled when
GLOBIGNORE is unset.
This also handily ignores . and .. when expanding wildcards, so to remove all files - except '.venv' - in a directory, we can do
c.run("GLOBIGNORE='.venv'; rm -Rf {project_path}*")

Executing a local shell function on a remote host over ssh using Python

My .profile defines a function
myps () {
ps -aef|egrep "a|b"|egrep -v "c\-"
}
I'd like to execute it from my python script
import subprocess
subprocess.call("ssh user#box \"$(typeset -f); myps\"", shell=True)
Getting an error back
bash: -c: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `;'
bash: -c: line 0: `; myps'
Escaping ; results in
bash: ;: command not found
script='''
. ~/.profile # load local function definitions so typeset -f can emit them
ssh user#box ksh -s <<EOF
$(typeset -f)
myps
EOF
'''
import subprocess
subprocess.call(['ksh', '-c', script]) # no shell=True
There are a few pertinent items here:
The dotfile defining this function needs to be locally invoked before you run typeset -f to dump the function's definition over the wire. By default, a noninteractive shell does not run the majority of dotfiles (any specified by the ENV environment variable is an exception).
In the given example, this is served by the . ~/profile command within the script.
The shell needs to be one supporting typeset, so it has to be bash or ksh, not sh (as used by script=True by default), which may be provided by ash or dash, lacking this feature.
In the given example, this is served by passing ['ksh', '-c'] is the first two arguments to the argv array.
typeset needs to be run locally, so it can't be in an argv position other than the first with script=True. (To provide an example: subprocess.Popen(['''printf '%s\n' "$#"''', 'This is just literal data!', '$(touch /tmp/this-is-not-executed)'], shell=True) evaluates only printf '%s\n' "$#" as a shell script; This is just literal data! and $(touch /tmp/this-is-not-executed) are passed as literal data, so no file named /tmp/this-is-not-executed is created).
In the given example, this is mooted by not using script=True.
Explicitly invoking ksh -s (or bash -s, as appropriate) ensures that the shell evaluating your function definitions matches the shell you wrote those functions against, rather than passing them to sh -c, as would happen otherwise.
In the given example, this is served by ssh user#box ksh -s inside the script.
I ended up using this.
import subprocess
import sys
import re
HOST = "user#" + box
COMMAND = 'my long command with many many flags in single quotes'
ssh = subprocess.Popen(["ssh", "%s" % HOST, COMMAND],
shell=False,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
result = ssh.stdout.readlines()
The original command was not interpreting the ; before myps properly. Using sh -c fixes that, but... ( please see Charles Duffy comments below ).
Using a combination of single/double quotes sometimes makes the syntax easier to read and less prone to mistakes. With that in mind, a safe way to run the command ( provided the functions in .profile are actually accessible in the shell started by the subprocess.Popen object ):
subprocess.call('ssh user#box "$(typeset -f); myps"', shell=True),
An alternative ( less safe ) method would be to use sh -c for the subshell command:
subprocess.call('ssh user#box "sh -c $(echo typeset -f); myps"', shell=True)
# myps is treated as a command
This seemingly returned the same result:
subprocess.call('ssh user#box "sh -c typeset -f; myps"', shell=True)
There are definitely alternative methods for accomplishing these type of tasks, however, this might give you an idea of what the issue was with the original command.

passing command line options having multiple suboptions to python script -- shell script

I have the following options:
python runscript.py -O start -a "-a "\"-o \\\"-f/dev/sda1 -b256k -Q8\\\" -l test -p maim\""
runscript takes -O and -a and then sends remaining to shell script 1
shell script 1 takes option -a and should consider remaining \"-o \\\"-f/dev/sda1 -b256k -Q8\\\" -l test -p maim\" as argument to shell script 2
shell script 2 takes argument -o, -l and -p.
Can anyone please help me with this kind of scenario. I am stuck where shell script 1 considers and starts parsing argument -o too.
Is there a simple way to do. The hierarchy of shell script 1 calling 2 should be maintained.
Regards
Sai
The command you gave is bit confusing. I am generalizing the scenario. Is this something you meant?
python runscript.py -p1 v1 -p2 v2 -p3 v3
runscript.py will take all given parameters.
and calls shellsript_1.sh with selected params say -p2 v2
and then calls shellscript_2.sh with remaining params say -p3 v3
We may need more accurate explanation of the problem.
The conventional way to do this in UNIX is to split the argument list about a pivot (usually --) such that the main script consumes all the arguments to the left of the pivot and leaves the remaining arguments for the other script(s). If you have flexibility in your calling function, I'd recommend doing it this way.
So, if runscript.py and both shell scripts all need to consume a separate argument list, your command line would look something like this:
python runscript.py <args for runscript> -- <args for 1st script> -- <args for 2nd script>
For example (I'm just guessing at your hierarchy):
python runscript.py -O start -- -l test -p maim -- -f/dev/sda1 -b256k -Q8

Requiring flags based upon other flags argparse

I have a series of flags...
--one
--two
-a
-b
-c
-d
I would like to have -a and -b required whenever I start with --one and -c, -d whenever I start with --two.
How exactly do I accomplish this? I know I can make an option required, but that's not the same as requiring options based on already given options.

Categories