Python argparse mutual exclusive group

by

add_mutually_exclusive_group doesn’t make an entire group mutually exclusive. It makes options within the group mutually exclusive.

What you’re looking for is subcommands. Instead of prog [ -a xxxx | [-b yyy -c zzz]], you’d have:

prog 
  command 1 
    -a: ...
  command 2
    -b: ...
    -c: ...

To invoke with the first set of arguments:

prog command_1 -a xxxx

To invoke with the second set of arguments:

prog command_2 -b yyyy -c zzzz

You can also set the sub command arguments as positional.

prog command_1 xxxx

Kind of like git or svn:

git commit -am
git merge develop

Working Example

# create the top-level parser
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='PROG')
parser.add_argument('--foo', action='store_true', help='help for foo arg.')
subparsers = parser.add_subparsers(help='help for subcommand', dest="subcommand")

# create the parser for the "command_1" command
parser_a = subparsers.add_parser('command_1', help='command_1 help')
parser_a.add_argument('a', type=str, help='help for bar, positional')

# create the parser for the "command_2" command
parser_b = subparsers.add_parser('command_2', help='help for command_2')
parser_b.add_argument('-b', type=str, help='help for b')
parser_b.add_argument('-c', type=str, action='store', default="", help='test')

Test it

>>> parser.print_help()
usage: PROG [-h] [--foo] {command_1,command_2} ...

positional arguments:
  {command_1,command_2}
                        help for subcommand
    command_1           command_1 help
    command_2           help for command_2

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --foo                 help for foo arg.
>>>

>>> parser.parse_args(['command_1', 'working'])
Namespace(subcommand='command_1', a="working", foo=False)
>>> parser.parse_args(['command_1', 'wellness', '-b x'])
usage: PROG [-h] [--foo] {command_1,command_2} ...
PROG: error: unrecognized arguments: -b x

Good luck.

More Related Contents:

  1. Parsing boolean values with argparse
  2. How can I pass a list as a command-line argument with argparse?
  3. Simple argparse example wanted: 1 argument, 3 results
  4. Can’t get argparse to read quoted string with dashes in it?
  5. Argparse optional positional arguments?
  6. How to insert newlines on argparse help text?
  7. Python argparse – Add argument to multiple subparsers
  8. Argparse: Required argument ‘y’ if ‘x’ is present
  9. Python argparse ignore unrecognised arguments
  10. Python argparse: default value or specified value
  11. Python Argparse conditionally required arguments
  12. Argparse with required subparser
  13. How to parse multiple nested sub-commands using python argparse?
  14. argparse subparser monolithic help output
  15. Display help message with Python argparse when script is called without any arguments
  16. How to open file using argparse?
  17. Specify date format for Python argparse input arguments
  18. Why use argparse rather than optparse?
  19. Argparse – do not catch positional arguments with `nargs`.
  20. Setting options from environment variables when using argparse
  21. Accepting a dictionary as an argument with argparse and python [duplicate]
  22. Conditional command line arguments in Python using argparse
  23. argparse – disable same argument occurrences
  24. Python argparse command line flags without arguments
  25. Customize argparse help message
  26. type=dict in argparse.add_argument()
  27. argparse argument order
  28. argparse subcommands with nested namespaces
  29. Call function based on argparse
  30. Using the same option multiple times in Python’s argparse

Leave a Comment