required_unless, required_unless_one, and required_unless_all for ArgGroup

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Issue by AuroransSolis
Thursday Apr 09, 2020 at 10:05 GMT
Originally opened as clap-rs/clap#1801

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Describe your use case

The issue this aims to solve is the lack of required_unless, required_unless_one, and required_unless_all for ArgGroup. For example, one might have the following:

let app = App::new("example")
    .arg(Arg::with_name("foo-user")
        .takes_value(true)
        .long("foo-user"))
    .arg(Arg::with_name("foo-user-file")
        .takes_value(true)
        .long("foo-user-file"))
    .group(ArgGroup::with_name("foo-username")
        .args(&["foo-user", "foo-user-file"])
        .multiple(false)
        .requires("foo-password"))
    .arg(Arg::with_name("foo-pass")
        .takes_value(true)
        .long("foo-pass"))
    .arg(Arg::with_name("foo-pass-file")
        .takes_value(true)
        .long("foo-pass-file"))
    .group(ArgGroup::with_name("foo-password")
        .args(&["foo-pass", "foo-pass-file"])
        .multiple(false))
    .group(ArgGroup::with_name("foo-creds")
        .args(&["foo-username", "foo-password"])
        .requires_all(&["foo-username", "foo-password"])
        .multiple(true)
        .required_unless("bar-creds"))
    .arg(Arg::with_name("bar-user")
        .takes_value(true)
        .requires("bar-password")
        .long("bar-user"))
    .arg(Arg::with_name("bar-user-file")
        .takes_value(true)
        .requires("bar-password")
        .long("bar-user-file"))
    .group(ArgGroup::with_name("bar-username")
        .args(&["bar-user", "bar-user-file"])
        .multiple(false))
    .arg(Arg::with_name("bar-pass")
        .takes_value(true)
        .long("bar-pass"))
    .arg(Arg::with_name("bar-pass-file")
        .takes_value(true)
        .long("bar-pass-file"))
    .group(ArgGroup::with_name("bar-password")
        .args(&["bar-pass", "bar-pass-file"])
        .multiple(false))
    .group(ArgGroup::with_name("bar-creds")
        .args(&["bar-username", "bar-password"])
        .multiple(true))
    .arg(Arg::with_name("bar-fallback-to-foo")
        .takes_value(false)
        .requires_all(&["foo-creds", "bar-creds"]));

One might imagine a different situation where required_unless_one or required_unless_all might be of use as well, but the only short example I could come up with is one demonstrating the use of required_unless. This reduces the number of lines required to express certain requirements by moving a required_unless, required_unless_one, or required_unless_all method from each argument in the group to a single one on the group itself. This also makes requirements for group arguments more clear and maintainable, as they're located in a single spot instead of on each group argument.

Alternatives

It may be possible in some situations to use required_unless, required_unless_one, or required_unless_all on the arguments in the group one might otherwise apply to the group itself, but this would be at least one line per argument, possibly more if the slices for required_unless_one or required_unless_all are particularly long.

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Comment by j-delaney
Friday Apr 10, 2020 at 12:18 GMT

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I'm happy to take a shot at this if that's okay!

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Comment by Dylan-DPC
Friday Apr 10, 2020 at 12:18 GMT

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Go ahead. Thanks

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Comment by pksunkara
Wednesday May 20, 2020 at 14:14 GMT

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Better way to fix this would be implementing the following way

factoring out most of Arg and ArgGroup into new ArgBase struct to avoid code duplication