flags.go

// Copyright 2012 Jesse van den Kieboom. All rights reserved.
// Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
// license that can be found in the LICENSE file.

/*
Package flags provides an extensive command line option parser.
The flags package is similar in functionality to the go built-in flag package
but provides more options and uses reflection to provide a convenient and
succinct way of specifying command line options.


Supported features

The following features are supported in go-flags:

    Options with short names (-v)
    Options with long names (--verbose)
    Options with and without arguments (bool v.s. other type)
    Options with optional arguments and default values
    Option default values from ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLES, including slice and map values
    Multiple option groups each containing a set of options
    Generate and print well-formatted help message
    Passing remaining command line arguments after -- (optional)
    Ignoring unknown command line options (optional)
    Supports -I/usr/include -I=/usr/include -I /usr/include option argument specification
    Supports multiple short options -aux
    Supports all primitive go types (string, int{8..64}, uint{8..64}, float)
    Supports same option multiple times (can store in slice or last option counts)
    Supports maps
    Supports function callbacks
    Supports namespaces for (nested) option groups

Additional features specific to Windows:
    Options with short names (/v)
    Options with long names (/verbose)
    Windows-style options with arguments use a colon as the delimiter
    Modify generated help message with Windows-style / options


Basic usage

The flags package uses structs, reflection and struct field tags
to allow users to specify command line options. This results in very simple
and concise specification of your application options. For example:

    type Options struct {
        Verbose []bool `short:"v" long:"verbose" description:"Show verbose debug information"`
    }

This specifies one option with a short name -v and a long name --verbose.
When either -v or --verbose is found on the command line, a 'true' value
will be appended to the Verbose field. e.g. when specifying -vvv, the
resulting value of Verbose will be {[true, true, true]}.

Slice options work exactly the same as primitive type options, except that
whenever the option is encountered, a value is appended to the slice.

Map options from string to primitive type are also supported. On the command
line, you specify the value for such an option as key:value. For example

    type Options struct {
        AuthorInfo string[string] `short:"a"`
    }

Then, the AuthorInfo map can be filled with something like
-a name:Jesse -a "surname:van den Kieboom".

Finally, for full control over the conversion between command line argument
values and options, user defined types can choose to implement the Marshaler
and Unmarshaler interfaces.


Available field tags

The following is a list of tags for struct fields supported by go-flags:

    short:            the short name of the option (single character)
    long:             the long name of the option
    required:         whether an option is required to appear on the command
                      line. If a required option is not present, the parser will
                      return ErrRequired (optional)
    description:      the description of the option (optional)
    long-description: the long description of the option. Currently only
                      displayed in generated man pages (optional)
    no-flag:          if non-empty this field is ignored as an option (optional)

    optional:       whether an argument of the option is optional (optional)
    optional-value: the value of an optional option when the option occurs
                    without an argument. This tag can be specified multiple
                    times in the case of maps or slices (optional)
    default:        the default value of an option. This tag can be specified
                    multiple times in the case of slices or maps (optional)
    default-mask:   when specified, this value will be displayed in the help
                    instead of the actual default value. This is useful
                    mostly for hiding otherwise sensitive information from
                    showing up in the help. If default-mask takes the special
                    value "-", then no default value will be shown at all
                    (optional)
    env:            the default value of the option is overridden from the
                    specified environment variable, if one has been defined.
                    (optional)
    env-delim:      the 'env' default value from environment is split into
                    multiple values with the given delimiter string, use with
                    slices and maps (optional)
    value-name:     the name of the argument value (to be shown in the help,
                    (optional)

    base: a base (radix) used to convert strings to integer values, the
          default base is 10 (i.e. decimal) (optional)

    ini-name:       the explicit ini option name (optional)
    no-ini:         if non-empty this field is ignored as an ini option
                    (optional)

    group:                when specified on a struct field, makes the struct
                          field a separate group with the given name (optional)
    namespace:            when specified on a group struct field, the namespace
                          gets prepended to every option's long name and
                          subgroup's namespace of this group, separated by
                          the parser's namespace delimiter (optional)
    command:              when specified on a struct field, makes the struct
                          field a (sub)command with the given name (optional)
    subcommands-optional: when specified on a command struct field, makes
                          any subcommands of that command optional (optional)
    alias:                when specified on a command struct field, adds the
                          specified name as an alias for the command. Can be
                          be specified multiple times to add more than one
                          alias (optional)
    positional-args:      when specified on a field with a struct type,
                          uses the fields of that struct to parse remaining
                          positional command line arguments into (in order
                          of the fields). If a field has a slice type,
                          then all remaining arguments will be added to it.
                          Positional arguments are optional by default,
                          unless the "required" tag is specified together
                          with the "positional-args" tag (optional)

Either the `short:` tag or the `long:` must be specified to make the field eligible as an
option.


Option groups

Option groups are a simple way to semantically separate your options. All
options in a particular group are shown together in the help under the name
of the group. Namespaces can be used to specify option long names more
precisely and emphasize the options affiliation to their group.

There are currently three ways to specify option groups.

    1. Use NewNamedParser specifying the various option groups.
    2. Use AddGroup to add a group to an existing parser.
    3. Add a struct field to the top-level options annotated with the
       group:"group-name" tag.



Commands

The flags package also has basic support for commands. Commands are often
used in monolithic applications that support various commands or actions.
Take git for example, all of the add, commit, checkout, etc. are called
commands. Using commands you can easily separate multiple functions of your
application.

There are currently two ways to specify a command.

    1. Use AddCommand on an existing parser.
    2. Add a struct field to your options struct annotated with the
       command:"command-name" tag.

The most common, idiomatic way to implement commands is to define a global
parser instance and implement each command in a separate file. These
command files should define a go init function which calls AddCommand on
the global parser.

When parsing ends and there is an active command and that command implements
the Commander interface, then its Execute method will be run with the
remaining command line arguments.

Command structs can have options which become valid to parse after the
command has been specified on the command line. It is currently not valid
to specify options from the parent level of the command after the command
name has occurred. Thus, given a top-level option "-v" and a command "add":

    Valid:   ./app -v add
    Invalid: ./app add -v


Completion

go-flags has builtin support to provide bash completion of flags, commands
and argument values. To use completion, the binary which uses go-flags
can be invoked in a special environment to list completion of the current
command line argument. It should be noted that this `executes` your application,
and it is up to the user to make sure there are no negative side effects (for
example from init functions).

Setting the environment variable `GO_FLAGS_COMPLETION=1` enables completion
by replacing the argument parsing routine with the completion routine which
outputs completions for the passed arguments. The basic invocation to
complete a set of arguments is therefore:

    GO_FLAGS_COMPLETION=1 ./completion-example arg1 arg2 arg3

where `completion-example` is the binary, `arg1` and `arg2` are
the current arguments, and `arg3` (the last argument) is the argument
to be completed. If the GO_FLAGS_COMPLETION is set to "verbose", then
descriptions of possible completion items will also be shown, if there
are more than 1 completion items.

To use this with bash completion, a simple file can be written which
calls the binary which supports go-flags completion:

    _completion_example() {
        # All arguments except the first one
        args=("${COMP_WORDS[@]:1:$COMP_CWORD}")

        # Only split on newlines
        local IFS=$'\n'

        # Call completion (note that the first element of COMP_WORDS is
        # the executable itself)
        COMPREPLY=($(GO_FLAGS_COMPLETION=1 ${COMP_WORDS[0]} "${args[@]}"))
        return 0
    }

    complete -F _completion_example completion-example

Completion requires the parser option PassDoubleDash and is therefore enforced if the environment variable GO_FLAGS_COMPLETION is set.

Customized completion for argument values is supported by implementing
the flags.Completer interface for the argument value type. An example
of a type which does so is the flags.Filename type, an alias of string
allowing simple filename completion. A slice or array argument value
whose element type implements flags.Completer will also be completed.
*/
package flags