Interactive Shell & Help

Cyclopts has a builtin interactive shell-like feature:

from cyclopts import App

app = App()


@app.command
def foo(p1):
    """Foo Docstring.

    Parameters
    ----------
    p1: str
        Foo's first parameter.
    """


@app.command
def bar(p1):
    """Bar Docstring.

    Parameters
    ----------
    p1: str
        Bar's first parameter.
    """


# A blocking call, launching an interactive shell.
app.interactive_shell(prompt="cyclopts> ")

To make the application still work as-expected from the CLI, it is more appropriate to set a command (or @app.default) to launch the shell:

@app.command
def shell():
    app.interactive_shell()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app()  # Don't call ``app.interactive_shell()`` here.

Special flags like --help and --version work in the shell, but could be a bit awkward for the root-help:

$ python interactive-shell-demo.py
Interactive shell. Press Ctrl-D to exit.
cyclopts> --help
Usage: interactive-shell-demo.py COMMAND

╭─ Parameters ──────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --version      Display application version.                   │
│ --help     -h  Display this message and exit.                 │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Commands ────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ bar  Bar Docstring.                                           │
│ foo  Foo Docstring.                                           │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
cyclopts> foo --help
Usage: interactive-shell-demo.py foo [ARGS] [OPTIONS]

Foo Docstring

╭─ Parameters ──────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ *  P1,--p1  Foo's first parameter. [required]                 │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
cyclopts>

To resolve this, we can explicitly add a help command:

@app.command
def help():
    """Display the help screen."""
    app.help_print([])

$ python interactive-shell-demo.py
Interactive shell. Press Ctrl-D to exit.
cyclopts> help
Usage: interactive-shell-demo.py COMMAND

╭─ Parameters ──────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --version      Display application version.                   │
│ --help     -h  Display this message and exit.                 │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Commands ────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ bar   Bar Docstring.                                          │
│ foo   Foo Docstring.                                          │
│ help  Display the help screen.                                │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯