NAME Getopt::Fancy - Object approach to handling command line options, focusing on end user happiness SYNOPSIS use Getopt::Fancy; my $opts = Getopt::Fancy->new(); $opts->add("db", GT => "=s", EX => "", DESC => "The database to dump. Leave unset for all databases.", DEF => "teen_titans", ALLOWED => ["--all-databases", "mydb", "teen_titans"], REGEX => '^[a-zA-Z0-9\_]+$', REQ => 0, SECTION => "Required DB Params"); # Allow just printing out of set options $opts->add("check_args", DESC => "Just print all the options", SECTION => "Misc Params"); # Allow user to specify list of options s/he needs help with $opts->add("help", GT => ":s@", EX => "[option1,option2..]", DESC => "Give option names and it'll print the help for just those options, otherwise all.", SECTION=>"Misc Params", COMMAS=>1); # Get the command line options my $error_msg = $opts->get_options(); print_usage($error_msg) if $error_msg; print "Will dump this database: $opts->{db} \n"; print "User wants help information on these: " . join(", ", @{$opts->{help}}) . "\n" if ($opts->{help}); print_usage() if $opts->{help}; print_args() if $opts->{check_args}; sub print_args { print $opts->get_values(); exit(0); } sub print_usage { my $hopts; my $msg = shift; $hopts = $opts->{help} unless (scalar @{$opts->{help}} == 0); print "usage: $0 \n"; print $opts->get_usage($hopts); print "ERROR: $msg\n" if $msg; exit(0); } DESCRIPTION "Getopt::Fancy" Allows command line options to be all in one place in your script including default values, allowed values, user-friendly descriptions, required flags and pattern matching requirements. Ofttimes script writers skimp on the usage information or have out-dated help information. This modules helps script writers to be better citizens. This module uses Getopt::Long, so the same rules apply. METHODS "my $opts = GetOpt::Fancy->new()" Construct a new object. "$opts->add($opt_name, %config)" "add()" is where you specify the command line options you want to accept and the configuration for each. $opts->add("hostname", GT => "=s", EX => "", DESC => "The hostname to connect to to do whatever.", DEF => "batcomputer", REGEX => '^[a-zA-Z0-9\_\-\.]+$', SECTION => "Connection Params"); The possible config values are ... * GT - The Getopts type specification (=i, :s, =s@, etc) * DEF - The default value for this option if the user running your script doesn't give one. If the option is multivalued, pass in a reference to an array of values. * REQ - A flag (1 or 0) denoting if this option is required. (You can just leave this out if it's 0) * REGEX - A regular expression the value must match. * ALLOWED - A reference to an array of allowed values. This allows you to restrict the set. * COMMAS - A flag (1 or 0) denoting if this multivalued option should allow comma separated values. This only applies to options that have a "@" in their GT (=s@, etc). If this is set, the user of your script can specify multiple values by just doing something like: -colors red,green,blue * EX - A human readable example value for the user of your script that is printed during -help * DESC - A human readable description of the option for the user of your script that is printed during -help * SECTION - A human readable section header for the user of your script that is printed during -help. This allows you to group similar options together "$opts->get_options()" Call this when it's time to read and parse the command line options. It will return a human readable string describing to the end user what they did wrong. If all is well, returns undef. After you call this, you can then treat $opts as a hash ref: $opts->{my_option} "$opts->get_usage([optional,list,of,options])" Returns a pretty, printable string of all the possible options, example values, descriptions, allowed values and default values, grouped by SECTION. If a reference to an array of option names is passed in, only usage information for those options is included. "$opts->get_values()" Returns a pretty, printable string of all the options and currently set values. The object pretends to be a hash ref, so if you want values themselves, just do: $opts->{my_option} "$opts->get_error()" Returns the human readable error string describing the error during the options handling. This string is also returned after "get_options" LEGALESE Copyright 2006 by Robert Powers, all rights reserved. This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. AUTHOR 2006, Robert Powers