HelpFormatter in Click

Question

I am using click within a local module and I would like to adjust how the help is displayed:

Currently output with --help:

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

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  foo     Foo is a program very nice and pretty...

By default the prog name is __main__.py and the text is trimmed to 78 chars.

I discovered that this can be adjusted using the HelpFormatter class. But I don't know how to use it in this context.

Current Code:

import click

@click.group()
def main(ctx):
   pass

@main.command()
def foo():
   pass

click.CommandCollection(sources=[main])()

Expected output:

Usage: my_module_name [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  foo     Foo is a program very nice and pretty and this sentence is very long.

Ensanguine

Can you give an example of what you are after, both code and what you are hoping the help will look like? – Educate

I added the expected output – Ensanguine

Answer 1

If you are trying to to avoid the truncation of the help string, this can be accomplished via the short_help parameter. short_help is generally derived from help but truncated. If passed explicitly, the entire string will be displayed.

To display the string my_module_name, that can be passed under the parameter prog_name

Test Code:

import click

@click.group()
def main(ctx):
   pass

@main.command(short_help='Foo is a program very nice and pretty and '
                         'this sentence is very long.')
def foo():
   pass

main(['--help'], prog_name='my_module_name')

Results of short_help:

Usage: my_module_name [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  foo  Foo is a program very nice and pretty and this sentence is very long.

Educate

What about my ´__main__.py' ? – Ensanguine

Do you get that behavior with the test code I just posted? Because I do not see that. – Educate

As long as I put your code in the file test.py yes. But if you put it into the file foo/__main__.py and you do PYTHONPATH=. python -m foo --help you will see __main__.py instead of test.py... – Ensanguine

Oh, __main__ is the actual name of your file? So in that case __main__.py is the name of your module. So you want to be able to specify an arbitrary string there? – Educate

Yes exactly, I would like to specify an arbitrary string, or better, the name of my module. – Ensanguine