How do I manually invoke click CLIs from within a Python calling context with parameters?

Question

In order to set up automatic function aliases in setuptools, it's necessary to wrap all args in some kind of function. If I am using a click interface, I'll need some way to parameterize specific calls to the click interface in order to alias them.

---

In a hello world format, how do I call a Python click interface CLI:

# cli.py
import click
@click.group()
def cli():
  """Help Message"""
  pass

within Python, rather than on the command line, with an argument so that:

# command line
$ python3 cli.py --help
Help Message

# python interpreter
>>> cli(???) # replace ??? w/ the correct argument
Help Message

the "Help Message" is displayed when I call the CLI from within a python3 runtime context?

Answer 1

Although there is an existing related question, there is a lot of discussion. This solution addresses the problem.

tldr: a click cli group accepts an arg list of strings.

import click

@click.group()
def cli():
    """ A click group """
    pass

@cli.command()
@click.argument("name")
def hello(name):
    click.echo(f"hello, {name}")

Sourcing this in a python interpreter, hello can be invoked with an arg list:

>>> cli(["hello", "chris"])
hello, chris

Process finished with exit code 0

So the answer is: invoke the interface with an arg list. And the specific answer for my use case, defining short-circuit entrypoints in my module's automatic script section, can be enabled via the following technique:

# cli.py 

def hello_fn():
  cli(["hello", "chris"]

# setuptools setup.py
setup( 
  ...
  entry_points = {
    'console_scripts': [
      "hello = myModule.cli:hello_fn",
      ...
    ]
  }