NAME
Getopt::GUI::Long
SYNOPSIS
use Getopt::GUI::Long;
# pass useful config options to Configure
Getopt::GUI::Long::Configure(qw(display_help no_ignore_case capture_output));
GetOptions(\%opts,
["GUI:separator", "Important Flags:"],
["f|some-flag=s", "A flag based on a string"],
["o|other-flag", "A boloean"],
);
# or use references instead of a hash (less tested, however):
GetOptions(["some-flag=s", "perform some flag based on a value"] => \$flag,
["other-flag=s", "perform some flag based on a value"] => \$other);
# displays auto-help given the input above:
% opttest -h
Usage: opttest [OPTIONS] Other Arguments
OPTIONS:
Important Flags:
-f STRING A flag based on a string
-o A boloean
Help Options:
-h Display help options -- short flags preferred
--help Display help options -- long flags preferred
--help-full Display all help options -- short and long
# or long help:
% opttest --help
Usage: opttest [OPTIONS] Other Arguments
OPTIONS:
Important Flags:
--some-flag=STRING A flag based on a string
--other-flag A boloean
Help Options:
-h Display help options -- short flags preferred
--help Display help options -- long flags preferred
--help-full Display all help options -- short and long
# or a GUI screen:
(see http://net-policy.sourceforge.net/images/getopt_example.png )DESCRIPTION
This module is a wrapper around Getopt::Long that extends the value of
the original Getopt::Long module to:
1) add a simple graphical user interface option screen if no
arguments are passed to the program. Thus, the arguments to
actually use are built based on the results of the user
interface. If arguments were passed to the program, the user
interface is not shown and the program executes as it normally
would and acts just as if Getopt::Long::GetOptions had been
called instead.
2) provide an auto-help mechanism such that -h and --help are
handled automatically. In fact, calling your program with -h
will default to showing the user a list of short-style arguments
when one exists for the option. Similarly --help will show the
user a list of long-style when possible. --help-full will list
all potential arguments for an option (short and long both).
It's designed to make the creation of graphical shells trivial
without the programmer having to think about it much as well as
providing automatic good-looking usage output without the
programmer needing to write usage() functions.HISTORY
This module was originally named Getopt::Long::GUI but the Getopt::Long author wanted to reserve the Getopt::Long namespace entirely for himself and thus it's been recently renamed to Getopt::GUI::Long instead. The class tree isn't as clean this way, as this module still inherits from Getopt::Long but it everything still works of course.
USAGE
The Getopt::GUI::Long module can work identically to the Getopt::Long module but really benefits from some slightly different usage conventions described below.
Option format:
Option strings passed should be formatted in one of the following ways:
- Empty String
-
Empty strings are ignored by the non-GUI version of the command, but are treated as vertical separators between questions when displaying the GUI screen.
- Standard flag specification string
-
EG: "some-flag|optional-flag=s"This is the standard method by which Getopt::Long does things and is merely treated the same way here. In this case, the text presented to the user screen will be the first name in the list ("some-flag") in the above option. The type of wdget displayed with the text will depend on the optional =s/i/whatever flag and will be either a checkbox, entry box, ...
- Array Reference
-
EG: ["some-flag|optional-flag=s", 'Prompt text', OTHER],The values passed in this array are as follows:
- 0: Standard flag specification string
-
Same as always, and as above.
- 1: Prompt text about flag
-
The help text that should be shown to the user in the graphical interface. In the example above rather than "some-flag" being shown, "Prompt text" will be shown next to the widget instead.
If the prompt text is equal to "!GUI" then this option will not be displayed (automatically at least) within the GUI.
- 2...: OTHER options
-
Beyond the name and description, key value pairs can indicate more about how the option should be handled.
- required => 1
-
Forces a screen option to be filled out by the user.
- question => { QUESTION FORM }
- question => [{ QUESTION1}, {QUESTION2}, ...]
-
These allows you to build custom QWizard widgets to meet a particular question need. It's highly useful for doing menus and single choice fields that normally command line options don't handle well. For example consider a numeric priority level between 0 and 10. The following question definition will give them a menu rather than a fill in the blank field:
['priority=i','Priority Level', question => { type => 'menu', values => [1..10] }]Note you can specify multiple question widgets if needed as well, though this will probably be rare in usage.
[others TBD]
Special Flag Names
Flags that start with GUI: are not passed to the normal Getopt::Long routines and are instead for internal GUI digestion only. If the GUI screen is going to be displayed (remember: only if the user didn't specify any options), these extra options control how the GUI behaves.
Some of these options requires some knowledge of the QWizard programming system. Knowledge of QWizard should only be required if you want to make use of those particular extra features.
- GUI:guionly
-
EG: ['GUI:guionly', { type => 'checkbox', name => 'myguiflag'}]Specifies a valid QWizard question(s) to only be shown when the gui is displayed, and the specification is ignored during normal command line usage.
- GUI:separator
-
EG: ['GUI:separator', 'Task specific options:']Inserts a label above a set of options to identify them as a group.
- GUI:screen
-
EG: ['GUI:screen', 'Next Screen Title', ...]Specifies that a break in the option requests should occur and the remaining options should appear on another screen(s). This allows applications with a lot of options to reduce the complexity it offers users and offers a more "wizard" like approach to helping them decide what they're trying to do.
You can also make this next screen definition conditional by defining an earlier option that may be, say, a boolean flag called "feature_flag". Using this you can then only go into the next screen if the "feature_flag" was set by doing the following:
['feature-flag', 'turn on a special feature needing more options'], ['GUI:screen', 'Next Screen Title', doif => 'feature-flag'] ['feature-arg1', 'extra argument #1 for special feature'], ...Also, if you need to do more complex calculations use the qwparam() function of the passed in QWizard object in a subroutine reference instead:
['feature1','Turn on feature #1"], ['feature2','Turn on feature #2"], ['GUI:screen', 'Next Screen Title', doif => sub { return ($_[1]->qwparam('feature1') && $_[1]->qwparam('feature2')); }] - GUI:otherargs_text
-
EG: ['GUI:otherargs', 'Files to process:']Normally the GUI screen shows a "Other Arguments:" option at the bottom of the main GUI screen to allow users to entry additional flags (needed for file names, etc, and other non-option arguments to be passed). However, since it doesn't know what these arguments should be it can only provide a generic "Other Arguments:" description. This setting lets you change that text to something specific to what your application experts, such as "Files:" or "HTML Files:" or something that helps the user understand what is expected of them.
If you want to self-handle the argument prompting using other QWizard constructs, then use the nootherargs token described below instead.
- GUI:nootherargs
-
EG: ['GUI:nootherargs', 1]Normally the GUI screen shows a "Other Arguments:", or programmer described text as described above, option at the bottom of the main GUI screen. If you're going to handle the additional arguments yourself in some way (using either some GUI:guionly or (GUI:otherprimaries and GUI:submodules) flags), then you should specify this so the other arguments field is not shown. You're expected, in your self-handling code, to set the __otherargs QWizard parameter to the final arguments that should be passed on.
- GUI:otherprimaries
-
EG: ['GUI:otherprimaries', primaryname => { title => '...', questions => [...] }]Defines other primaries to be added to the QWizard primary set.
- GUI:submodules
-
EG: ['GUI:submodules', 'primaryname']Defines a list of other primaries that should be called after the initial one.
- GUI:post_answers
-
EG: ['GUI:post_actions', sub { do_something(); }]Defines an option for QWizard post_answers subroutines to run.
- GUI:actions
-
EG: ['GUI:post_actions', sub { do_something(); }]Defines an option for QWizard actions subroutines to run.
- GUI:actions
-
EG: ['GUI:hook_finished', sub { do_something(); }]Defines subroutine(s) to be called after the GUI has completely finished.
- GUI:
CONFIGURATION
If you call Getopt::GUI::Long's Configure routine, it will accept a number of configure tokens and will pass the remaining ones to the Getopt::Long Configure routine. The tokens that it recognizes itself are described below:
- display_help
-
The Getopt::GUI::Long package will auto-display help messages based on the text included in the GetOptions call. No more writing those silly usage() functions!
Note that this differs from the Getopt::Long's implementation of the auto_help token in that the information is pulled from the extended GetOptions called instead of the pod documentation.
The display_help token will automatically add the following options to the options the application will accept, and will catch and process them as well.
- capture_output
-
This tells the Getopt::GUI::Long module that it should caputure the resulting STDOUT and STDERR results from the script and display the results in a window once the script has finished.
PORTABILITY
If programs desire to not require this module, the following code snippit can be used instead which will not fail even if this module is not available. To be used this way, the LocalGetOptions and LocalOptionsMap functions should be copied to your perl script.
LocalGetOptions(\%opts,
["h|help", "Show help for command line options"],
["some-flag=s", "perform some flag based on a value"]);
sub LocalGetOptions {
if (eval {require Getopt::GUI::Long;}) {
import Getopt::GUI::Long;
# optional configure call
Getopt::GUI::Long::Configure(qw(display_help no_ignore_case capture_output));
return GetOptions(@_);
}
require Getopt::Long;
import Getopt::Long;
# optional configure call
Getopt::Long::Configure(qw(auto_help no_ignore_case));
GetOptions(LocalOptionsMap(@_));
}
sub LocalOptionsMap {
my ($st, $cb, @opts) = ((ref($_[0]) eq 'HASH')
? (1, 1, $_[0]) : (0, 2));
for (my $i = $st; $i <= $#_; $i += $cb) {
if ($_[$i]) {
next if (ref($_[$i]) eq 'ARRAY' && $_[$i][0] =~ /^GUI:/);
push @opts, ((ref($_[$i]) eq 'ARRAY') ? $_[$i][0] : $_[$i]);
push @opts, $_[$i+1] if ($cb == 2);
}
}
return @opts;
}EXAMPLES
See the getopttest program in the examples directory for an exmaple script that uses a lot of these features.
AUTHOR
Wes Hardaker, hardaker@users.sourceforge.net
SEE ALSO
perl(1)
modules: QWizard