CmdLineParser

Reflection based fast command line parser (arg[] -> POCO)

New in 3.8.1

• Support for net8
• Update of test unit nugets

At a glance: Support for

• uint16|32|64, int16|32|64, decimal, single, double, byte, sbyte
• Guid, DateTime, Boolean, Enums, IPAddress, strings
• int[], string[], bool[]
• culture dependent conversion for numbers and datetime values
• '-' and '/' as argument format
• argument-value separation with ':'
• arguments can occure as fieldname, shortname and longname

Includes a help text generator, just add help text within attribute and you get a sorted list of possible arguments

It's free, opensource and licensed under APACHE 2.0 (an OSI approved license).

Supported platforms: net5 - net8

This is a small library for parsing command line arguments in a POCO object with the magic of reflection.

You simply define a POCO and add some attributes to the fields. The following example illustrates this

public class DummyTestEnumArg
{
	[DefaultArgument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, DefaultValue = RenameMode.ZipFiles, HelpText = "default renames zip files")]
	public RenameMode Mode;
}

As you can see, enums are fully supported, too. For all numbers and DateTime you can attribute the culture to indicate how the value should be converted. If you don't provide a culture, InvariantCulture will be used as standard. Further down you find an example of this feature.

The following example show all possibilities for attributes:

public class DummyTestArguments
{
    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required, ShortName = "", HelpText = "Starting number of connections.")]
    public int StartConnections;
    
    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required, HelpText = "Maximum number of connections.")]
    public int MaxConnections;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Unique, HelpText = "Force internal connection pool to be used")]
    public bool ForcePoolUsing;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required, ShortName = "inc", HelpText = "Number of connections to increment, if needed.")]
    public int IncrementOfConnections;
    
    [DefaultArgument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, DefaultValue = @"{AppPath}\myconfig.xml", HelpText = "Path with params to config file.")]
    public string Configpath;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, DefaultValue = true, HelpText = "Count number of lines in the input text.")] 
    public bool Lines;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, LongName = "WordsToBeCounted", HelpText = "Count number of words in the input text.")] 
    public bool Words;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, HelpText = "Count number of chars in the input text.")] 
    public bool Chars;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, DefaultValue = 17, HelpText = "Count errors before function breaks")]
    public int MaxErrorsBeforeStop;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, HelpText = "Count errors before function breaks")]
    public Guid ProgramId;

    // This default is invalid! Only for testing purpose added!
    [DefaultArgument(ArgumentTypes.MultipleUnique, HelpText = "Input files to count.")] 
    public string[] Files;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, ShortName = "p", HelpText = "Dummy int array")] 
    public int[] Priorities;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, ShortName = "pp", HelpText = "Dummy bool array")]
    public bool[] ProcessPriorities;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.AtMostOnce, OccurrenceSetsBool = true)]
    public bool FlagWhenFound;

    public string ThisIsNotAnArgumentButShoudNotCreateAnError;

    private bool PrivateDummyField;
}

In code call:

var result = new CommandLineParser<DummyTestArguments>().Parse(args);

and your POCO will be filled

Following field types are supported:

public class AllSupportedTypes
{
    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public Int16 Int16Field;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public Int32 Int32Field;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public Int64 Int64Field;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public UInt16 UInt16Field;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public UInt32 UInt32Field;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public UInt64 UInt64Field;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public Decimal DecimalField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public Single SingleField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public Double DoubleField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public Char CharField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public RenameMode EnumField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public bool BoolField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public string StringField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public DateTime DateTimeField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public Guid GuidField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public IPAddress IPAddressField;
    
    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required, Culture = "de-DE")]
    public DateTime DateTimeFieldWithCultureInfo;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required, Culture = "de-DE")]
    public Double DoubleFieldWithCultureInfo;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public byte ByteField;

    [Argument(ArgumentTypes.Required)]
    public sbyte SByteField;

}

Unit test are done with Xunit, a great testing tool.

Please note: If you want to handover negative values or a guid, please quote it with "

example: -128 -> "-128"

The parser treats - (minus) as start of an option, except it is found inside a quote.

Addional function:

parser.GetHelpTexts() to get an enumeration of all help texts

parser.GetConsoleFormattedHelpTexts() to get a helptext formatted for console output