How to use ChatGPT to create automations in Python using Click and Trogon

Evergreen

Created: 2023-06-30 Updated: 2023-06-30

python click trogon automation command line interface

I've been using ChatGPT to create automations in Python using the Click and Trogon. For example, I might say:

"I would like a Python Click script that combines all of the files in a target directory into a single file."

When I ask ChatGPT exactly this, I get:

@click.command() @click.argument('directory', type=click.Path(exists=True)) @click.argument('output_file', type=click.Path()) def combine_files(directory, output_file):

Get a list of all files in the target directory

file_list = os.listdir(directory)

Sort the files alphabetically to ensure consistent order

file_list.sort()

Open the output file in write mode

with open(output_file, 'w') as output:

Iterate over each file in the directory

for filename in file_list:

Construct the full file path

file_path = os.path.join(directory, filename)

Check if the current item is a file (not a subdirectory)

if os.path.isfile(file_path):

Read the contents of the file

with open(file_path, 'r') as file: file_contents = file.read()

Write the contents to the output file

output.write(file_contents)

click.echo(f"All files in '{directory}' have been combined into '{output_file}'.")

if name == 'main': combine_files()

Then I copy the output from ChatGPT into a script that have called automations.py where I'm beginning to grow a collection of these little automations. In automations.py I have a Click group that looks like:

@tui() @click.group() def automation(): pass

The @tui decorator comes from the Trogon library that analyzes the Click decorators to build a Terminal User Interface. Click is a Python library used for creating CLI's (Command Line Interfaces) and Trogon is built by the folks at Textualize and uses their Textual library to build the TUI.

Now I have to change the decorator @click.command() to @automation.command() so that the Python function is nested under my automation group. I've also changed:

if name == 'main': automation()

The final output of the script looks like:

import os import click

from trogon import tui

@tui() @click.group() def automation(): pass

@automation.command() @click.argument('directory', type=click.Path(exists=True)) @click.argument('output_file', type=click.Path()) def combine_files(directory, output_file):

Get a list of all files in the target directory

file_list = os.listdir(directory)

Sort the files alphabetically to ensure consistent order

file_list.sort()

Open the output file in write mode

with open(output_file, 'w') as output:

Iterate over each file in the directory

for filename in file_list:

Construct the full file path

file_path = os.path.join(directory, filename)

Check if the current item is a file (not a subdirectory)

if os.path.isfile(file_path):

Read the contents of the file

with open(file_path, 'r') as file: file_contents = file.read()

Write the contents to the output file

output.write(file_contents)

click.echo(f"All files in '{directory}' have been combined into '{output_file}'.")

if name == 'main': automation()

Now I can run: python3 [automations.py](http://automations.py/) tui You can also use the help flag:

python3 automations.py --help Usage: automations.py [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options: --help Show this message and exit.

Commands: combine-files tui Open Textual TUI.

To make things easier for myself, I added the following couple of lines to my .zshrc file:

export PATH="/path/to/automations.py:$PATH" alias automations="automations.py"

Now I can run automations tui from anywhere.