Command Line Interface

Emmett provides a built-in integration of the click command line interface, to implement and allow customization of command line scripts.

Basic Usage

Emmett automatically installs a command emmett inside your virtualenv. The way this helper works is by providing access to all the commands on your Emmett application's instance, as well as some built-in commands that are included out of the box. Emmett extensions can also register more commands there if they desire to do so.

For the emmett command to work, an application needs to be discovered. Emmett tries to automatic discover your application in the current working directory. In case Emmett fails to automatically detect your application, you can tell Emmett which application it should inspect, use the --app / -a parameter. It should be the import path for your application or the path to a Python file.

Given that, to run a development server for your application, you can just write in your command line:

> emmett develop

or, in the case of a single-file app:

> emmett -a myapp.py develop

Running a Shell

To run an interactive Python shell, you can use the shell command:

> emmett shell

This will start up an interactive Python shell, setup the correct application context and setup the local variables in the shell. By default, you have access to your app object, and all the variables you defined in your application module.

Custom Commands

If you want to add more commands to the shell script, you can do this easily.
In fact, if you want a shell command to setup your application, you can write:

from emmett import App

app = App(__name__)

@app.command('setup')
def setup():
    # awesome code to initialize your app

The command will then be available on the command line:

> emmett setup

Command groups

New in version 2.2

You might also want to define several commands within the same logical group. In this scenario, the command_group decorator is what you're looking for:

@app.command_group('tasks')
def tasks_cmd():
    pass


@tasks_cmd.command('create')
def tasks_create_cmd():
    # some code here

As you can see we defined a tasks command group, and a nested create command. We can invoke the upper command using:

> emmett tasks create

In case you need more information, please check the click documentation about commands and groups.