How can I split my Click commands, each with a set of sub-commands, into multiple files?

I’m not an click expert, but it should work by just importing your files into the main one. I would move all commands in separate files and have one main file importing the other ones. That way it is easier to control the exact order, in case it is important for you. So your main file would just look like:

import commands_main
import commands_cloudflare
import commands_uptimerobot

I’m looking for something like this at the moment, in your case is simple because you have groups in each of the files, you can solve this problem as explained in the documentation:

In the init.py file:

import click

from command_cloudflare import cloudflare
from command_uptimerobot import uptimerobot

cli = click.CommandCollection(sources=[cloudflare, uptimerobot])

if __name__ == '__main__':
    cli()

The best part of this solution is that is totally compliant with pep8 and other linters because you don’t need to import something you wouldn’t use and you don’t need to import * from anywhere.

Suppose your project have the following structure:

project/
├── __init__.py
├── init.py
└── commands
    ├── __init__.py
    └── cloudflare.py

Groups are nothing more than multiple commands and groups can be nested. You can separate your groups into modules and import them on you init.py file and add them to the cli group using the add_command.

Here is a init.py example:

import click
from .commands.cloudflare import cloudflare


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


cli.add_command(cloudflare)

You have to import the cloudflare group which lives inside the cloudflare.py file. Your commands/cloudflare.py would look like this:

import click


@click.group()
def cloudflare():
    pass


@cloudflare.command()
def zone():
    click.echo('This is the zone subcommand of the cloudflare command')

Then you can run the cloudflare command like this:

$ python init.py cloudflare zone

This information is not very explicit on the documentation but if you look at the source code, which is very well commented, you can see how groups can be nested.

It took me a while to figure this out
but I figured I’d put this here to remind myself when I forget how to do i again
I think part of the problem is that the add_command function is mentioned on click’s github page but not the main examples page

first lets create an initial python file called root.py

import click
from cli_compile import cli_compile
from cli_tools import cli_tools

@click.group()
def main():
    """Demo"""

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main.add_command(cli_tools)
    main.add_command(cli_compile)
    main()

Next lets put some tools commands in a file called cli_tools.py

import click

# Command Group
@click.group(name='tools')
def cli_tools():
    """Tool related commands"""
    pass

@cli_tools.command(name='install', help='test install')
@click.option('--test1', default='1', help='test option')
def install_cmd(test1):
    click.echo('Hello world')

@cli_tools.command(name='search', help='test search')
@click.option('--test1', default='1', help='test option')
def search_cmd(test1):
    click.echo('Hello world')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    cli_tools()

Next lets put some compile commands in a file called cli_compile.py

import click

@click.group(name='compile')
def cli_compile():
    """Commands related to compiling"""
    pass

@cli_compile.command(name='install2', help='test install')
def install2_cmd():
    click.echo('Hello world')

@cli_compile.command(name='search2', help='test search')
def search2_cmd():
    click.echo('Hello world')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    cli_compile()

running root.py should now give us

Usage: root.py [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Demo

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  compile  Commands related to compiling
  tools    Tool related commands

running “root.py compile” should give us

Usage: root.py compile [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Commands related to compiling

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  install2  test install
  search2   test search

You’ll also notice you can run the cli_tools.py or cli_compile.py directly as well as I included a main statement in there

edit: just realized that my answer/comment is little more than a rehash of what Click’s official docs offer in the "Custom Multi Commands" section: https://click.palletsprojects.com/en/7.x/commands/#custom-multi-commands

Just to add to the excellent, accepted answer by @jdno, I came up with a helper function that auto-imports and auto-adds subcommand modules, which vastly cut down on the boilerplate in my cli.py:

My project structure is this:

projectroot/
    __init__.py
    console/
    │
    ├── cli.py
    └── subcommands
       ├── bar.py
       ├── foo.py
       └── hello.py

Each subcommand file looks something like this:

import click

@click.command()
def foo():
    """foo this is for foos!"""
    click.secho("FOO", fg="red", bg="white")

(for now, I just have one subcommand per file)

In cli.py, I’ve written a add_subcommand() function that loops through every filepath globbed by "subcommands/*.py" and then does the import and add command.

Here’s what the body of the cli.py script is simplified to:

import click
import importlib
from pathlib import Path
import re

@click.group()
def entry_point():
    """whats up, this is the main function"""
    pass

def main():
    add_subcommands()
    entry_point()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

And this is what the add_subcommands() function looks like:

SUBCOMMAND_DIR = Path("projectroot/console/subcommands")

def add_subcommands(maincommand=entry_point):
    for modpath in SUBCOMMAND_DIR.glob('*.py'):
        modname = re.sub(f'/', '.',  str(modpath)).rpartition('.py')[0]
        mod = importlib.import_module(modname)
        # filter out any things that aren't a click Command
        for attr in dir(mod):
            foo = getattr(mod, attr)
            if callable(foo) and type(foo) is click.core.Command:
                maincommand.add_command(foo)

I don’t know how robust this is if I were to design a command that had several levels of nesting and context switching. But it seems to work all right for now 🙂

When you want your user to pip install "your_module", and then use commands, you can add them in setup.py entry_points as a list:

entry_points={
    'console_scripts': [
        'command_1 = src.cli:function_command_1',
        'command_2 = src.cli:function_command_2',
    ]

each command is bounded to function in a cli file.