Argh

Argh is an opinionated Derive-based argument parser optimized for code size

Derive-based argument parsing optimized for code size and conformance to the Fuchsia commandline tools specification

The public API of this library consists primarily of the FromArgs derive and the from_env function, which can be used to produce a top-level FromArgs type from the current program's commandline arguments.

Basic Example

use argh::FromArgs;

#[derive(FromArgs)]
/// Reach new heights.
struct GoUp {
    /// whether or not to jump
    #[argh(switch, short = 'j')]
    jump: bool,

    /// how high to go
    #[argh(option)]
    height: usize,

    /// an optional nickname for the pilot
    #[argh(option)]
    pilot_nickname: Option<String>,
}

fn main() {
    let up: GoUp = argh::from_env();
}

./some_bin --help will then output the following:

Usage: cmdname [-j] --height <height> [--pilot-nickname <pilot-nickname>]

Reach new heights.

Options:
  -j, --jump        whether or not to jump
  --height          how high to go
  --pilot-nickname  an optional nickname for the pilot
  -h, --help        display usage information

The resulting program can then be used in any of these ways:

• ./some_bin --height 5
• ./some_bin -j --height 5
• ./some_bin --jump --height 5 --pilot-nickname Wes

Switches, like jump, are optional and will be set to true if provided.

Options, like height and pilot_nickname, can be either required, optional, or repeating, depending on whether they are contained in an Option or a Vec. Default values can be provided using the #[argh(default = "<your_code_here>")] attribute, and in this case an option is treated as optional.

use argh::FromArgs;

fn default_height() -> usize {
    5
}

#[derive(FromArgs)]
/// Reach new heights.
struct GoUp {
    /// an optional nickname for the pilot
    #[argh(option)]
    pilot_nickname: Option<String>,

    /// an optional height
    #[argh(option, default = "default_height()")]
    height: usize,

    /// an optional direction which is "up" by default
    #[argh(option, default = "String::from(\"only up\")")]
    direction: String,
}

fn main() {
    let up: GoUp = argh::from_env();
}

Custom option types can be deserialized so long as they implement the FromArgValue trait (automatically implemented for all FromStr types). If more customized parsing is required, you can supply a custom fn(&str) -> Result<T, String> using the from_str_fn attribute:

use argh::FromArgs;

#[derive(FromArgs)]
/// Goofy thing.
struct FiveStruct {
    /// always five
    #[argh(option, from_str_fn(always_five))]
    five: usize,
}

fn always_five(_value: &str) -> Result<usize, String> {
    Ok(5)
}

Positional arguments can be declared using #[argh(positional)]. These arguments will be parsed in order of their declaration in the structure:

use argh::FromArgs;

#[derive(FromArgs, PartialEq, Debug)]
/// A command with positional arguments.
struct WithPositional {
    #[argh(positional)]
    first: String,
}

The last positional argument may include a default, or be wrapped in Option or Vec to indicate an optional or repeating positional argument.

Subcommands are also supported. To use a subcommand, declare a separate FromArgs type for each subcommand as well as an enum that cases over each command:

use argh::FromArgs;

#[derive(FromArgs, PartialEq, Debug)]
/// Top-level command.
struct TopLevel {
    #[argh(subcommand)]
    nested: MySubCommandEnum,
}

#[derive(FromArgs, PartialEq, Debug)]
#[argh(subcommand)]
enum MySubCommandEnum {
    One(SubCommandOne),
    Two(SubCommandTwo),
}

#[derive(FromArgs, PartialEq, Debug)]
/// First subcommand.
#[argh(subcommand, name = "one")]
struct SubCommandOne {
    #[argh(option)]
    /// how many x
    x: usize,
}

#[derive(FromArgs, PartialEq, Debug)]
/// Second subcommand.
#[argh(subcommand, name = "two")]
struct SubCommandTwo {
    #[argh(switch)]
    /// whether to fooey
    fooey: bool,
}

NOTE: This is not an officially supported Google product.

How to debug the expanded derive macro for argh

The argh::FromArgs derive macro can be debugged with the cargo-expand crate.

Expand the derive macro in examples/simple_example.rs

See argh/examples/simple_example.rs for the example struct we wish to expand.

First, install cargo-expand by running cargo install cargo-expand. Note this requires the nightly build of Rust.

Once installed, run cargo expand with in the argh package and you can see the expanded code.