simple-python-cli-app-template

This is a cookiecutter template for generating simple Python command-line interface (CLI) applications and utilities.

The primary audience is data science and data processing teams, however, the template is generic enough to find a good fit in other places.

Please, refer to the project's article to get more info.

Contents

• Features
• Prerequisites
• Template invocation
• Params
• MAKE commands
• Caveats

Features

The template provides essentials for creating, packaging, and managing CLI applications. Among them:

• Config and params passing, overriding and validating:
  • Define and validate config structure in jsonschema format.
  • Define config defaults.
  • Optionally read configs from JSON or YAML files.
  • Optionally override config values using args defined via argparse or click.
  • Optionally override config values using env vars.
• Logging setup:
  • Support of microsecond resolution.
  • Support of UTC or local time zone in log records.
  • Log records format.
  • Optionally inject hostname into log records.
  • Optionally format log records as JSON.
• Definition of an installable package with executable commands.
• Linting support via flake8.
• Optional testing via pytest.
• Helpful make commands.

Prerequisites

As this is a cookiecutter's template, make sure it's installed:

pip install cookiecutter

Template invocation

Default usage is the same as for any other cookiecutter templates: call cookiecutter and pass template's URL as a param:

cookiecutter https://github.com/oblalex/simple-python-cli-app-template

or a GitHub repo name via gh shortcut:

cookiecutter gh:oblalex/simple-python-cli-app-template

Next, follow cookiecutter's questions to set up params and get a minimal working application. Refer to the following section to see which params are available.

NOTE: Please, refer to cookiecutter's documentation regarding .cookiecutterrc file and --no-input argument in case user-prompt is unwelcome.

Params

The template accepts several parameters to configure a project being created. Parameters have default values. The full set of template's params is listed below.

project_name

Name of a project (string). Used in documentation. Defaults of several other params are calculated from it.

Default value: "Simple Python CLI App".

package_name

Name of Python package to create (string).

Default value is calculated from project_name via slugification.

Example value: "simple_python_cli_app".

executable_name

Name of an executable file to create during package installation (string).

Default value is calculated from project_name via slugification.

Example value: "simple-python-cli-app".

class_name_prefix

Prefix used for package class names (string).

Default value is calculated from project_name via slugification.

Example value: "SimplePythonCliApp".

env_var_name_prefix

Prefix used for names of env vars (string). Used to override config values.

Default value is calculated from project_name via slugification.

Example value: "SIMPLE_PYTHON_CLI_APP".

project_short_description

Short description of the package being created (string). Used in documentation.

Default value: "Simple Python CLI application".

project_url

Project's URL (string).

Default value: "" (empty string).

version

Project's version (string).

Default value: "1.0.0".

author_name

Name of package's author or owning team (string).

Default value: "John Doe".

author_email

Email of package's author or owning team (string).

Default value: "[email protected]".

author_username

Username of package's author or owning team (string).

Default value: "john.doe".

create_author_file

Whether to create or not AUTHORS.rst file (boolean).

Default value: y.

command_line_interface

Command-line parser to use (integer as a choice number of string's).

Choices:

1. argparse
2. click

Default value: 1.

config_file_format

Config file format to use (integer as a choice number of string's).

Choices:

1. YAML
2. JSON
3. no config file

Default value: 1.

logging_time_zone

Time zone to use in timestamps of log records (integer as a choice number of string's).

Choices:

1. utc
2. local

Default value: 1.

logging_include_hostname

Whether to include hostname into log records or not (boolean).

Default value: y.

logging_format_json

Whether to format log records as json or not (boolean).

Default value: n.

use_pytest

Whether to use pytest as test runner or not (boolean).

Default value: n.

MAKE commands

This template includes a Makefile with commands useful to perform common duty tasks:

clean

Remove all build, test, coverage and Python artifacts.

clean-build

Remove build artifacts.

clean-pyc

Remove Python file artifacts.

clean-test

Remove test and coverage artifacts.

lint

Check style with flake8.

test

Run tests quickly with the default Python.

dist

Builds source and wheel package.

install

Install the package to the active Python's site-packages.

install-e

Install the package into the active Python's site-packages in editable mode via pip.

dev-deps

Install development dependencies via pip.

test-deps

Install testing dependencies via pip.

Caveats

As cookiecutter uses Jinja2 as a template engine and as certain functionality provided by this template is optional, resulting files may contain extra newlines or be missing them.