[Freeipa-devel] freeIPA v2: Changes to output_for_cli() signature

[Jason Gerard DeRose]

The output_for_cli() method signature has changed from:

  output_for_cli(self, result)

to:

  output_for_cli(self, textui, result, *args, **options)

Rob had the excellent idea of passing the args and options the command
was called with (thus the new *args, **options in the signature).

I've been thinking about how output should be formatted when a command
is called through the CLI, and my conclusion was that we really don't
want commands using the print statement directly... we want the commands
to provide a consistent experience to the user, and that's too difficult
to do if every command does its own output totally willy-nilly.

So I started work on a new "textui" backend plugin. The goal is to
provide maybe a dozen or so high-level methods for common output
scenarios, and then have each command's output_for_cli() method use only
this textui API. This way we can tweak the CLI output by just modifying
the textui plugin, but have it affect all the commands simultaneously.
This textui plugin will also do things like determine the tty width and
word wrap appropriately.

The textui plugin is in ipalib/cli.py

The best examples so far of using textui are probably the "env" and
"plugins" commands in ipalib/plugins/f_misc.py

I also added two related sections in the tutorial.  I still haven't
figured out how to make epydoc include anchors, but the two new sections
are named:

  "Allowed return values from your command"

and

  "How your command should print to stdout"

They are about half way down the page. As always, the latest build of
the tutorial can be found here:

  http://freeipa.org/developer-docs/ipalib-module.html


Cheers,
Jason DeRose




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