Flagpole

Flagpole is an intelligent, configurable replacement for stdlib flag.Flaset.

Rather than confusing, imperative (and limited) calls to fs.String(...), fs.Bool(...) etc. - expected flags are defined as a struct, e.g.

type Flags struct {
    Help *bool `name:"help" alias:"h" usage:"Show help"`
    Port int   `name:"port" alias:"p" default:"80" usage:"Port number"`
}

Flags are then read directly into a struct by defining a parser and then parsing, e.g.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "github.com/go-andiamo/flagpole"
    "os"
)

type Flags struct {
    Help *bool `name:"help" alias:"h" usage:"Show help"`
    Port int   `name:"port" alias:"p" usage:"Port number"`
}

var flagParser = flagpole.MustNewParser[Flags](flagpole.StopOnHelp(true))

func main() {
    flags, err := flagParser.Parse(os.Args[1:])
    if err != nil || (flags.Help != nil && *flags.Help) {
        out := os.Stdout
        if err != nil {
            out = os.Stderr
        }
        flagParser.Usage(out, err, "myCli")
        if err != nil {
            os.Exit(2)
        }
        os.Exit(0)
    }
    // all good...
    fmt.Printf("Using port: %d\n", flags.Port)
}

Features/Advantages

• Supports common native field types: string,bool,int,int8,int16,int32,int64,uint,uint8,uint16,uint32,uint64,float32,float64
• Other field types supported if the type implements encoding.TextUnmarshaler
• Supports pointer types for optional flags (and parsed field value is only non-nil when the flag is actually present - no more guessing at zero values!)
• Supports slice field types (of common native type or elements implementing encoding.TextUnmarshaler)
• Flag sets can be composed (using embedded or nested structs)
• Optional error handling (allowing errors to be recorded but parsing continue)
• Usage display completely under your control - and display formatting is replaceable
• Minimal reflection use
  • Field reflection only at parser create time
  • Efficient field setters at parse time

Tags

Flagpole supports the following tags on struct fields:

• name

  is the flag name (if not present, the field name is used)

• alias

  is an alias name for the flag (can also be comma separated list of multiple aliases)

• usage

  is the usage description for the flag

• required

  e.g. required:"true" | required:"false"

  specifies whether the flag is required - if this tag is omitted, required is determined by whether the field is a non-pointer type

• default

  is the default value to use if the flag is required but not present

• example

  is the example of the flag usage (as used by single usage line example)

Installation

Use get:

go get github.com/go-andiamo/flagpole

Get to update to the latest version:

go get -u github.com/go-andiamo/flagpole