CLInspector

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CLInspector Documentation

CLInspector is a library to introspect Python CLI applications and extract their command structure and parameters programmatically.

Usage

The main entry point is the get_cmd_info() function which analyzes a CLI application instance and returns a structured CommandInfo object:

from clinspector import get_cmd_info

command_info = get_cmd_info(cli_instance)

The function accepts CLI application instances from the following frameworks:

• Typer - typer.Typer instances
• Click - click.Group instances
• Cleo - cleo.Application instances
• Cappa - Classes decorated with @cappa.command
• argparse - ArgumentParser instances

The extracted information is returned as a CommandInfo object containing:

CommandInfo Fields

• name: str - Name of the command
• description: str - Description/help text
• usage: str - Formatted usage string
• subcommands: dict[str, CommandInfo] - Nested subcommands
• deprecated: bool - Whether command is marked as deprecated
• epilog: str | None - Optional epilog text
• hidden: bool - Whether command is hidden
• params: list[Param] - List of command parameters

Param Fields

• name: str - Parameter name
• help: str | None - Help text
• default: Any - Default value
• opts: list[str] - Parameter options (e.g. ["-f", "--flag"])
• required: bool - Whether parameter is required
• is_flag: bool - Whether parameter is a flag
• multiple: bool - Whether parameter accepts multiple values
• nargs: int | str | None - Number of arguments accepted
• envvar: str | None - Environment variable name
• hidden: bool - Whether parameter is hidden
• param_type_name: Literal["option", "parameter", "argument"] - Parameter type
• type: dict[str, str] | None - Parameter type information
• metavar: str | None - Display name in help text

You can access subcommands using dictionary syntax:

# Get info for "build" subcommand
build_info = command_info["build"]

# Access nested subcommand
nested_info = command_info["group"]["subcommand"]

The extracted information allows you to:

- Generate documentation automatically
- Build command completion
- Create wrappers and adapters
- Perform static analysis of CLI interfaces
- And more!

Example output for a click command:

```python
CommandInfo(
    name="cli",
    description="Example CLI tool",
    usage="cli [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...",
    params=[
        Param(name="verbose", help="Enable verbose output", opts=["-v", "--verbose"])
    ],
    subcommands={
        "build": CommandInfo(
            name="build",
            description="Build the project",
            params=[...]
        )
    }
)