argparse allowing arbitrary flags

Question

Is there a way to allow argparse to accept arbitrary flags?

For example, I have a wrapper over git push called gitter

I would prefer to not have to specify all the flags available to git push as there are many.

However, I still want to be able to do something like

gitter --all --no-verify

Is there a way for argparse to take arbitrary flags and have those flags be passed onto git push?

If I do gitter --fake-flag, I immediately get an error without the chance of parsing out the flags.

chepner · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-15 02:24:33Z

6

You can use parse_known_args to leave unrecognized flags in a list.

p = ArgumentParser() p.add_argument("--foo") args, remaining = p.parse_known_args("--foo 5 --bar --baz".split()) # args.foo == 5 # remaining = ["--bar", "--baz"]

answered Oct 15, 2014 at 2:24

chepner

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4 Comments

Andy Over a year ago

Thanks for the response. I am guessing that I should replace '"--foo 5 --bar --baz".split()' with my actual flags that I can some how get from the ArgumentParser()?

chepner Over a year ago

Yes. parse_known_args doesn't require you to define any flags; anything on the command line that isn't defined is simply put (in order) in the second element of the tuple returned by parse_known_args. Flags that are recognized are parsed, removed, and used to set attributes of the first element.

Andy Over a year ago

Thanks again for getting back to me. Would you happen to know how to generate "--foo 5 --bar --baz".split() using ArgumentParser()? After fiddling around with it, I tried parse_args() but this returns a namespace object which can't be converted into a list object.

chepner Over a year ago

Both parse_args and parse_known_args just take a list of words (by default, sys.argv[1:]) as an argument. I use split as a quick-n-dirty method to generate a list from a string.

chepner · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-15 03:52:56Z

Why not use a bash script for gitter instead of Python? Something like:

#!/bin/bash git push --alwaysArg "$@"

When run:

gitter --all --no-verify

The resulting command will be:

git push --alwaysArg --all --no-verify

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