organize arguments

grouping

You can organize related command-line arguments under labeled sections using the group=... keyword. This helps structure the help message when you have many options and want to categorize them clearly. Each group name creates a new labeled section in the --help output.

class MyArgs(AbstractParser):

    GROUP_GENERAL = 'general'
    GROUP_OUTPUT = 'output'

    # Group for general options
    verbose: bool = argument('--verbose', group=GROUP_GENERAL, help='Enable verbose logging')
    config: str = argument('--config', group=GROUP_GENERAL, help='Path to configuration file')

    # Group for output options
    output_dir: str = argument('--output', group=GROUP_OUTPUT, help='Directory to save results')
    overwrite: bool = argument('--overwrite', group=GROUP_OUTPUT, help='Overwrite existing files')

• run the script with -h

usage: my_script.py [-h] [--verbose] [--config CONFIG] [--output OUTPUT_DIR] [--overwrite]

options:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit

general:
  --verbose            Enable verbose logging
  --config CONFIG      Path to configuration file

output:
  --output OUTPUT_DIR  Directory to save results
  --overwrite          Overwrite existing files

mutually exclusive grouping

Use the ex_group=... keyword to group arguments into a mutually exclusive group, meaning that only one of the arguments in the group can be specified at a time.

This is useful when two or more options conflict and cannot be used together.

class MyArgs(AbstractParser):

    output_json: bool = argument('--json', ex_group='output', help='Output as JSON')
    output_yaml: bool = argument('--yaml', ex_group='output', help='Output as YAML')

• run the script with mutually exclusive options

$ python my_script.py --json test.json --yaml test.yaml

usage: test.py [-h] [--json | --yaml]
argument --yaml: not allowed with argument --json