Categorize help output in Python Click

Question

I am trying to figure out how to categorize commands in Click to resemble something close to the structure that kubectl uses in the way it separate commands out.

For instance, in a vanilla Click help output we have:

Usage: cli.py [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  A CLI tool

Options:
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  command1   This is command1
  command2   This is command2
  command3   This is command3
  command4   This is command4

Instead, what would be ideal for my usage is to have a separation to better categorize the command structure.

For instance:

Usage: cli.py [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  A CLI tool

Options:
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Specific Commands for X:

  command1   This is command1
  command2   This is command2

Specific Commands for Y:

  command3   This is command3
  command4   This is command4

Global Commands:

  version    Shows version

I am using the latest Python and latest version of Click also for this.

I have tried looking into hooking into various Click classes to change this behaviour but have been unsuccessful in doing so. Closest I have gotten is being able to structure commands based on priority but I am not able to logically separate them out as in the example above.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Oceanid

Answer 1

I've achieved this by creating my own click.Group:

class OrderedGroup(click.Group):
    def __init__(self, name=None, commands=None, **attrs):
        super(OrderedGroup, self).__init__(name, commands, **attrs)
        self.commands = commands or collections.OrderedDict()

    def list_commands(self, ctx):
        return self.commands

    def format_commands(self, ctx, formatter):
        super().get_usage(ctx)

        formatter.write_paragraph()
        with formatter.section("Specific Commands for X:"):
            formatter.write_text(
                f'{self.commands.get("command1").name}\t\t{self.commands.get("command1").get_short_help_str()}')
            formatter.write_text(
                f"{self.commands.get('command2').name}\t\t{self.commands.get('command2').get_short_help_str()}")

        with formatter.section("Specific Commands for Y:"):
            formatter.write_text(
                f'{self.commands.get("command3").name}\t\t{self.commands.get("command3").get_short_help_str()}')
            formatter.write_text(
                f'{self.commands.get("command4").name}\t\t{self.commands.get("command4").get_short_help_str()}')

        with formatter.section("Global Commands"):
            formatter.write_text(
                f'{self.commands.get("version").name}\t\t{self.commands.get("version").get_short_help_str()}')

And created the cli group as such:

@click.group(cls=OrderedGroup)
def cli():
    pass

Does this help?

Crinkumcrankum

Thank you so much for replying! Is there any chance you could dive deeper into how it would be possible to lift this and shift it into a classes file so that it can just be imported? Or was there another way to use this? Ideally this would be just put into a classes file. However, I think, in my environment, what is choking is the self.commands part but I will see what suggestion you come back with. – Oceanid

It should be as simple as having the OrderedGroup into a separate file, ordered_group.py, and just do from ordered_group import OrderedGroup. Why is the self.commands causing issues? – Crinkumcrankum