Getting Start

In example folder, there are 3 independent command projects (cat, bird and dod). The goal is to set up a new command structure:

:: dog

  • bird

  • cat

All projects are the minimal command line project based on Click, which means they can be run independently.

1. Configure json file to set up structure

Firstly, to plug cat into dog, the example/dog/plugin_commands.json needs to be modified.

There are 4 fields here.

  • name: the name you want to use for this command, it will be shown in console

  • click_root: For each project using Click, there must be an root command for all subcommands or subgroups. The cat is the root command here.

  • package_path: this path indicates where is the plugin project’s folder

  • package_name: this is the path from project folder to the python file contains root command.

{
  "modules": [
        {
          "name": "cat",
          "click_root": "cat",
          "package_path": "../cat/",
          "package_name" : "catcli"
        }
  ]
}

To show how to add other plugins on Github like MySQLcli and SQLlitecli:

{
  "name": "litesql",
  "click_root": "cli",
  "package_path": "../litecli/",
  "package_name" : "litecli.main"
},
{
  "name": "mysql",
  "click_root": "cli",
  "package_path": "../mycli/",
  "package_name" : "mycli.main"
}

2. Add plugin loader

The next step is to add plugin loader into dog project. In dog/dogcli.py, there are two arguments for the loader:

  • json_file: indicates where is the configuration json file relative to base path.

  • base_path: indicates where is the current file, this is helpful to do plugin as an anchor, recommend using __file__ here.

from metacli.decorators import loadPlugin

@loadPlugin(json_file="plugin_commands.json",
    base_path=__file__)
@click.group()
@click.option('--version', default = "1")
@click.option('--verbose', default = "")
@click.pass_context
def dog(ctx, version, verbose) :
    """Welcome to dog's world"""
    pass

3. Collect and install all required packages

After adding the new project into base plugin, the package conflicts must be solved. So the dependency management tools in MetaCLI is recommended to check all required packages.

Right now, dog is our root. So, the following command needs to be run under the /dog folder. We can press enter in prompt to use current path as default for convenient, or we can input the absolute path for the project.

metacli dependency_management

MetaCLI will use current path to collect packages and generate requirement.txt.

After editing and deleting conflicts in requirements.txt, all the required packages can be installed using:

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Install and run CLI tools:

The new command structure is set up and can be installed:

   # in example/dog folder

   pip install --editable .
   dog --help

Now, the cat command is shown as a subcommand under the dog. To construct the entire structure, just follow 1-2 steps for bird and get the entire structure.

5. Others