How to specify a parameter of type Array into a Django Command?

Question

It is straight forward creating a string parameter such as --test_email_address below.

   class Command(BaseCommand):
        option_list = BaseCommand.option_list + (
            make_option('--test_email_address',
                        action='store',
                        type="string",
                        dest='test_email_address',
                        help="Specifies test email address."),
            make_option('--vpds',
                        action='store',
                        type='list',           /// ??? Throws exception
                        dest='vpds',
                        help="vpds list [,]"),
        )

But how can I define a list to be passed in? such as [1, 3, 5]

Pulpwood

did you try just list - without the quotes ? From the documentation, it looks like type can be any valid simple types. The other (hacky) way is to read the arguments as string, and parse it using ast.literal_eval or something. – Cursive

yeah I tried without the quotes and its the same problem. – Pulpwood

Answer 1

You should add a default value and change the action to 'append':

make_option('--vpds',
            action='append',
            default=[],
            dest='vpds',
            help="vpds list [,]"),

The usage is as follows:

python manage.py my_command --vpds arg1 --vpds arg2

Perlaperle

sorry, thats an interesting idea, but it throws an exception: optparse.OptionError: option --vpds: invalid option type: 'list' – Pulpwood

Removing type='list' fixes it. Updated the answer. – Perlaperle

Can anyone point me out to better info on the action values? I'm looking here without finding much info on what the available do or what values I can use – Parterre

@Parterre the docs actually say to check docs.python.org/3/library/argparse.html#action docs – Ripplet

Answer 2

You can also do it like this:

        parser.add_argument(
            "--vpds",
            nargs="*",
            help="vpds list",
            default=[],
            type=int,
        )

The usage is as follows:

python manage.py my_command --vpds 1 3 5

Specs