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MILC - An Opinionated Batteries-Included Python 3 CLI Framework

MILC is a framework for writing CLI applications in Python 3.6+. It gives you all the features users expect from a modern CLI tool out of the box:

  • CLI Argument Parsing, with or without subcommands
  • Automatic tab-completion support through argcomplete
  • Configuration file which can be overridden by CLI options
  • ANSI color support- even on Windows- with colorama
  • Logging to stderr and/or a file, with ANSI colors
  • Easy method for printing to stdout with ANSI colors
  • Labelling log output with colored emoji to easily distinguish message types
  • Thread safety
  • More than 60 built-in spinners with the ability to add your own

Getting Started

Read the tutorial to learn how to use MILC.

Reporting Bugs and Requesting Features

Please let us know about any bugs and/or feature requests you have: https://github.com/clueboard/milc/issues

Short Example

from milc import cli

@cli.argument('-c', '--comma', action='store_boolean', arg_only=True, default=True, help='comma in output')
@cli.argument('-n', '--name', default='World', help='Name to greet')
@cli.entrypoint('My useful CLI tool.')
def main(cli):
    comma = ',' if cli.args.comma else ''
    cli.log.info('Hello%s %s!', comma, cli.config.general.name)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    cli.run()

Output

$ ./hello
ℹ Hello, World!
$ ./hello --no-unicode
INFO Hello, World!
$ ./hello --no-comma
ℹ Hello World!
$ ./hello -h
usage: hello [-h] [-V] [-v] [--datetime-fmt GENERAL_DATETIME_FMT]
             [--log-fmt GENERAL_LOG_FMT] [--log-file-fmt GENERAL_LOG_FILE_FMT]
             [--log-file GENERAL_LOG_FILE] [--color] [--no-color]
             [--config-file GENERAL_CONFIG_FILE] [--save-config]
             [-n GENERAL_NAME] [-c] [--no-comma]

Greet a user.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -V, --version         Display the version and exit
  -v, --verbose         Make the logging more verbose
  --datetime-fmt GENERAL_DATETIME_FMT
                        Format string for datetimes
  --log-fmt GENERAL_LOG_FMT
                        Format string for printed log output
  --log-file-fmt GENERAL_LOG_FILE_FMT
                        Format string for log file.
  --log-file GENERAL_LOG_FILE
                        File to write log messages to
  --color               Enable color in output
  --no-color            Disable color in output
  --unicode             Enable unicode loglevels
  --no-unicode          Disable unicode loglevels
  --interactive         Force interactive mode even when stdout is not a tty.
  --config-file GENERAL_CONFIG_FILE
                        The config file to read and/or write
  -n GENERAL_NAME, --name GENERAL_NAME
                        Name to greet
  -c, --comma           Enable comma in output
  --no-comma            Disable comma in output

Breaking Changes

MILC follows Semantic Versioning. You can see a list of why we made major or minor releases on the Breaking Changes page.