Argparse: Required argument 'y' if 'x' is present

Question

I have a requirement as follows:

./xyifier --prox --lport lport --rport rport

for the argument prox , I use action='store_true' to check if it is present or not. I do not require any of the arguments. But, if --prox is set I require rport and lport as well. Is there an easy way of doing this with argparse without writing custom conditional coding.

More Code:

non_int.add_argument('--prox', action='store_true', help='Flag to turn on proxy')
non_int.add_argument('--lport', type=int, help='Listen Port.')
non_int.add_argument('--rport', type=int, help='Proxy port.')

Answer 1

No, there isn't any option in argparse to make mutually inclusive sets of options.

The simplest way to deal with this would be:

if args.prox and (args.lport is None or args.rport is None):
    parser.error("--prox requires --lport and --rport.")

Actually there's already an open PR with an enhancement proposal : https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/55797

Answer 2

You're talking about having conditionally required arguments. Like @borntyping said you could check for the error and do parser.error(), or you could just apply a requirement related to --prox when you add a new argument.

A simple solution for your example could be:

non_int.add_argument('--prox', action='store_true', help='Flag to turn on proxy')
non_int.add_argument('--lport', required='--prox' in sys.argv, type=int)
non_int.add_argument('--rport', required='--prox' in sys.argv, type=int)

This way required receives either True or False depending on whether the user as used --prox. This also guarantees that -lport and -rport have an independent behavior between each other.

Answer 3

How about using parser.parse_known_args() method and then adding the --lport and --rport args as required args if --prox is present.

# just add --prox arg now
non_int = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="stackoverflow question", 
                                  usage="%(prog)s [-h] [--prox --lport port --rport port]")
non_int.add_argument('--prox', action='store_true', 
                     help='Flag to turn on proxy, requires additional args lport and rport')
opts, rem_args = non_int.parse_known_args()
if opts.prox:
    non_int.add_argument('--lport', required=True, type=int, help='Listen Port.')
    non_int.add_argument('--rport', required=True, type=int, help='Proxy port.')
    # use options and namespace from first parsing
    non_int.parse_args(rem_args, namespace = opts)

Also keep in mind that you can supply the namespace opts generated after the first parsing while parsing the remaining arguments the second time. That way, in the the end, after all the parsing is done, you'll have a single namespace with all the options.

Drawbacks:

• If --prox is not present the other two dependent options aren't even present in the namespace. Although based on your use-case, if --prox is not present, what happens to the other options is irrelevant.
• Need to modify usage message as parser doesn't know full structure
• --lport and --rport don't show up in help message

Answer 4

Do you use lport when prox is not set. If not, why not make lport and rport arguments of prox? e.g.

parser.add_argument('--prox', nargs=2, type=int, help='Prox: listen and proxy ports')

That saves your users typing. It is just as easy to test if args.prox is not None: as if args.prox:.

Answer 5

The accepted answer worked great for me! Since all code is broken without tests here is how I tested the accepted answer. parser.error() does not raise an argparse.ArgumentError error it instead exits the process. You have to test for SystemExit.

with pytest

import pytest
from . import parse_arguments  # code that rasises parse.error()


def test_args_parsed_raises_error():
    with pytest.raises(SystemExit):
        parse_arguments(["argument that raises error"])

with unittests

from unittest import TestCase
from . import parse_arguments  # code that rasises parse.error()

class TestArgs(TestCase):

    def test_args_parsed_raises_error():
        with self.assertRaises(SystemExit) as cm:
            parse_arguments(["argument that raises error"])

inspired from: Using unittest to test argparse - exit errors