Settings¶
Settings provide a mechanism for a user to control the behavior of a cmd2
based application. A setting is stored in an instance attribute on your
subclass of cmd2.cmd2.Cmd
and must also appear in the
cmd2.cmd2.Cmd.settable
dictionary. Developers may set default values
for these settings and users can modify them at runtime using the
set command. Developers can
Create New Settings and can also
Hide Builtin Settings from the user.
Builtin Settings¶
cmd2
has a number of builtin settings. These settings control the behavior
of certain application features and Builtin Commands. Users can use the set command to
show all settings and to modify the value of any setting.
allow_style¶
Output generated by cmd2
programs may contain ANSI escape seqences which
instruct the terminal to apply colors or text styling (i.e. bold) to the
output. The allow_style
setting controls the behavior of these escape
sequences in output generated with any of the following methods:
cmd2.Cmd.poutput()
cmd2.Cmd.perror()
cmd2.Cmd.pwarning()
cmd2.Cmd.pexcept()
cmd2.Cmd.pfeedback()
cmd2.Cmd.ppaged()
This setting can be one of three values:
Never
- all ANSI escape sequences which instruct the terminal to style output are stripped from the output.Terminal
- (the default value) pass through ANSI escape sequences when the output is being sent to the terminal, but if the output is redirected to a pipe or a file the escape sequences are stripped.Always
- ANSI escape sequences are always passed through to the output
continuation_prompt¶
When a user types a Multiline Command it may span more than one line of input. The prompt for the first line of input is specified by the prompt setting. The prompt for subsequent lines of input is defined by this setting.
debug¶
The default value of this setting is False
, which causes the
pexcept()
method to only display the message from an
exception. However, if the debug setting is True
, then the entire stack
trace will be printed.
echo¶
If True
, each command the user issues will be repeated to the screen before
it is executed. This is particularly useful when running scripts. This
behavior does not occur when a running command at the prompt.
editor¶
Similar to the EDITOR
shell variable, this setting contains the name of the
program which should be run by the edit
command.
feedback_to_output¶
Controls whether feedback generated with the pfeedback()
method is sent to sys.stdout
or sys.stderr
. If False
the output
will be sent to sys.stderr
If True
the output is sent to stdout
(which is often the screen but may
be redirected). The
feedback output will be mixed in with and indistinguishable from output
generated with poutput()
.
locals_in_py¶
Allow access to your application in one of the
Embedded Python Shells via self
.
max_completion_items¶
Maximum number of CompletionItems to display during tab completion. A
CompletionItem is a special kind of tab-completion hint which displays both a
value and description and uses one line for each hint. Tab complete the set
command for an example.
If the number of tab-completion hints exceeds max_completion_items
, then
they will be displayed in the typical columnized format and will not include
the description text of the CompletionItem.
prompt¶
This setting contains the string which should be printed as a prompt for user input.
quiet¶
If True
, output generated by calling pfeedback()
is
suppressed. If False
, the feedback_to_output
setting controls where the output is sent.
timing¶
If True
, the elapsed time is reported for each command executed.
Create New Settings¶
Your application can define user-settable parameters which your code can
reference. First create a class attribute with the default value. Then update
the settable
dictionary with your setting name and a short description
before you initialize the superclass. Here’s an example, from
examples/environment.py
:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding=utf-8
"""
A sample application for cmd2 demonstrating customized environment parameters
"""
import cmd2
class EnvironmentApp(cmd2.Cmd):
""" Example cmd2 application. """
degrees_c = 22
sunny = False
def __init__(self):
super().__init__()
self.settable.update({'degrees_c': 'Temperature in Celsius'})
self.settable.update({'sunny': 'Is it sunny outside?'})
def do_sunbathe(self, arg):
if self.degrees_c < 20:
result = "It's {} C - are you a penguin?".format(self.degrees_c)
elif not self.sunny:
result = 'Too dim.'
else:
result = 'UV is bad for your skin.'
self.poutput(result)
def _onchange_degrees_c(self, old, new):
# if it's over 40C, it's gotta be sunny, right?
if new > 40:
self.sunny = True
if __name__ == '__main__':
import sys
c = EnvironmentApp()
sys.exit(c.cmdloop())
If you want to be notified when a setting changes (as we do above), then define
a method _onchange_{setting}()
. This method will be called after the user
changes a setting, and will receive both the old value and the new value.
(Cmd) set --long | grep sunny
sunny: False # Is it sunny outside?
(Cmd) set --long | grep degrees
degrees_c: 22 # Temperature in Celsius
(Cmd) sunbathe
Too dim.
(Cmd) set degrees_c 41
degrees_c - was: 22
now: 41
(Cmd) set sunny
sunny: True
(Cmd) sunbathe
UV is bad for your skin.
(Cmd) set degrees_c 13
degrees_c - was: 41
now: 13
(Cmd) sunbathe
It's 13 C - are you a penguin?
Hide Builtin Settings¶
You may want to prevent a user from modifying a builtin setting. A setting
must appear in the cmd2.cmd2.Cmd.settable
dictionary in order for it
to be available to the set command.
Let’s say your program does not have any
Multiline Commands. You might want to hide
the continuation_prompt setting from your users since
it is only applicable to multiline commands. To do so, remove it from the
cmd2.cmd2.Cmd.settable
dictionary after you initialize your object:
class MyApp(cmd2.Cmd):
def __init__(self):
super().__init__()
self.settable.pop('continuation_prompt')