fix cli arguments type casting

[e-tinkers]

Fix CLI arguments type casting

The JsonServer is designed to allow change the tcpport and disable autoaddmgr and autodeletemgr settings via command line arguments --tcpport 8081, --autoaddmgr False and --autodeltemgr False.

description of the bug

The current code does not works as per design intention as the python argparse library consider the default user input as ‘string’,

User input:

python JsonServer.py --tcpport 8081

will parsed by the argparse as a string instead of an integer for 8081:

{'serialport': None, 'autodeletemgr': False, 'configfilename': 'JsonServer.config', 'autoaddmgr': True, 'tcpport': '8081'}

Same issue for --autoaddmgr(and --autodeletemgr), where the user input argument is parsed as a string instead of bool.

python JsonServer.py --autoaddmgr False

result:

{'serialport': None, 'autodeletemgr': False, 'configfilename': 'JsonServer.config', 'autoaddmgr': 'False', 'tcpport': 8080}

proposed changes for fixing the issue

The solution for correctly cast the input argument for --tcpport can be solved by add type=int into the code:

parser.add_argument('--tcpport', type=int, default=8080)

Adding type=bool however doesn’t work for argparse library, instead it requires of using action as suggested by argparse documentation (see reference link below):

parse.add_argument(‘--autoaddmgr’, action=“store_false’, help='to disable autoaddmgr thread', default=True)

With action='store-false, simply add --autoaddmgr as command line argument without a value will disable the autoaddmgr thread. This is a little bit counter-intuitive, therefore a helper text would be helpful to explain the usage.

python JsonServer.py --autoaddmgr

Reference: https://docs.python.org/2.7/library/argparse.html#action