Args

A .NET library designed to allow for binding command line arguments to POCOs. The release will contain assemblies compiled in v3.5 and v4.0. Starting with release 1.2.0 .NET Standard 1.3 and .NET Standard 2.0 are also supported.

Features

• Conventions-based configuration
• Fluent API
• POCO classes
• Both switched arguments and ordinal arguments are supported
• Interfaces for most classes to allow for easy mocking
• Auto-generated help document
  • Comes packaged with a console formatter
  • Writing your own is as simple as implementing IHelpFormatter
• Out-of-the-box support for type conversion of all "simple" .NET types
• Support for IEnumerable<T>
• Enum support, including flags support
• Use existing TypeConverters for custom types
  • Can also implement a simple class for type conversion
  • Can also provide a lambda expression for type conversion
• Ability to define default values if one is not provided
• Attributes used from System.ComponentModel namespace whenever possible
• Available via NuGet

View Release Notes

Example

If standard conventions are used (see below), then usage is extremely simple. Define a POCO to hold your command line argument values:

public class CommandObject
{
    public string Source{get;set;}
	public string Destination{get;set;}
	public bool Force{get;set;}
}

public class Program
{
    public static void Main(string[] args)
	{
	    var command = Args.Configuration.Configure<CommandObject>().CreateAndBind(args);
	}
}

And you can call your exe like this:

C:\> MyProgram.exe /s readme.txt /d readme2.txt /f

Conventions

The default conventions in Args are:

• The switch delimiter is forward slash '/'
• The switches are checked for equality using CurrentCultureIgnoreCase
• The switch delimiter and string comparer can be set via the ArgsModelAttribute
• The System.ComponentModel.DescriptionAttribute can be used on both the model and members to set the help text for each
• All public fields and public settable properties are configured
  • Each property/field has two switches configured by default
    • The minimum number of characters to make it unique from all the other properties/fields
    • The entire name of the property/field
• System.ComponentModel.TypeResolverAttribute can be used on members to use a specific type converter for that member
• Args.ArgsSwitchMemberAttribute can be used to override the allowed swithces or to set as an ordinal parameter (see below)

Ordinal Parameters

These are required parameters that do not have any switches and have a specified order. They are used in the command line after the executable, but before any switched arguments.

License

Copyright (c) 2011 Brian Ball and contributors

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.