NOTICE: jSimpleArgs is now maintained on GitLab.

jSimpleArgs

jSimpleArgs is a flexible and powerful library for parsing command-line arguments in Java applications, while providing clear and helpful error messages and support for displaying help text to the user. It supports both short and long argument names, as well as assigning values to arguments and concatenating multiple short arguments together.

Features

• Support for short and long argument names
• Support for optional and required arguments
• Automatic help message generation
• Lightweight and easy to use

Installation

To use jSimpleArgs in your Java project, you can download the latest release from the GitHub repository releases.

Usage

To use JSimpleArgs in your project, simply create an instance of the JSimpleArgs class and create new arguments using the newArgument() method. You can then parse command-line arguments using the parse() method. Here's an example:

import dev.nicholasdonovan.jsimpleargs.JSimpleArgs;
import dev.nicholasdonovan.jsimpleargs.exceptions.InvalidInputException;
import dev.nicholasdonovan.jsimpleargs.exceptions.InvalidParserUsageException;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws InvalidParserUsageException, InvalidInputException {
        // args = {"-i", "/folder1/file1.txt"};
        JSimpleArgs parser = new JSimpleArgs();
        
        // Create a new keyword argument
        parser.newArgument("-i", "--input", "The path to the input file.")
            .required()
            .requiresValue();
    
        // Parse the 'args' array
        parser.parse(args);
    
        // Get the argument's value
        String value = parser.getArgument("-i").getValue();
    
        // Print the value
        System.out.println(value);
    
        // `/folder1/file1.txt` is printed.
    }
}

In this example, we create an JSimpleArgs object and add an argument with the short name -i, long name --input, its description to "The path to the input file.", its requiredness with required(), and the fact that it requires a value with requiresValue().

We then parse the command-line arguments using the parse() method, which may throw either an InvalidInputException exception if the command line input is invalid, or an InvalidParserUsageException exception if the programmer used the parser incorrectly.

Finally, we retrieve the value of the argument using the getValue() method of the parser, and print it to the console.

JSimpleArgs will automatically generate a help message for your program based on the arguments you define. You can customize the help message using the setHelp() method.

For more information, see the documentation.

License

jSimpleArgs is licensed under the GPL version 3 or later. See the LICENSE file for more information.