How to pass dictionary as command line argument to python script? - Stac... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18006161/how-to-pass-dictionary-as...

How to pass dictionary as command line argument to

python script?
Asked 7 years, 3 months ago Active 3 months ago Viewed 70k times

How to pass dictionary as command line argument to python script ? I need to get dictionary
where key is string and value is list of some elements ( for example to look like :
46
command_line_arguments = {"names" : ["J.J.", "April"], "years" : [25, 29]}

I have tried like

11

if __name__ == '__main__':
args = dict([arg.split('=') for arg in sys.argv[2:]]) # also tried with 1 but
doesn't work
main(args)

and I am calling script like

$ python saver.py names=["J.J.", "April"] years=[25, 29]

but it doesn't work, dictionary has length 0 and need 2. Can anyone help me to pass and
create dictionary in main.

python python-2.7

asked Aug 1 '13 at 23:10

PaolaJ.
8,454 19 59 92

1 docs.python.org/dev/library/argparse.html – Joran Beasley Aug 1 '13 at 23:17

4 Answers Active Oldest Votes

1 of 6 10/29/2020, 6:39 PM
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The important thing to note here is that at the command line you cannot pass in python objects
as arguments. The current shell you are using will parse the arguments and pass them in
73 according to it's own argument parsing rules.

That being said, you cannot pass in a python dictionary. However, things like JSON can allow
you to get pretty darn close.

JSON - or JavaScript Object Representation is a way of taking Python objects and converting
them into a string-like representation, suitable for passing around to multiple languages. That
being said, you could pass in a string like this:

python saver.py '{"names": ["J.J.", "April"], "years": [25, 29]}'

In your python script, do this:

import json
data=json.loads(argv[1])

This will give you back a dictionary representing the data you wanted to pass in.

Likewise, you can take a python dictionary and convert it to a string:

import json
data={'names': ["J.J.", "April"], 'years': [25,29]}
data_str=json.dumps(data)

There are other methods of accomplishing this as well, though JSON is fairly universal. The
key thing to note is that regardless of how you do it - you won't be passing the dictionary into
Python, - you'll be passing in a set of arguments (which will all be strings) that you'll need to
somehow convert into the python type you need.

@EvanZamir - note that (generally) in a shell, you need to escape quotes if they appear in
your quoted string. In my example, I quote the JSON data with single quotes, and the json
string itself uses double quotes, thereby obviating the need for quotes.

If you mix quotes (use double quotes to quote the argument, and double quotes inside), then
the shell will require it to be escaped, otherwise the first double quote it encounters is
considered the "closing quote" for the argument. Note in the example, I use single quotes to
enclose the JSON string, and double quotes within the string. If I used single quotes in the
string, I would need to escape them using a backslash, i.e.:

python saver.py '{"names": ["J.J.", "April\'s"], "years": [25, 29]}'

2 of 6 10/29/2020, 6:39 PM
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i tried this on centos 6.4,kde konsole, tcsh shell, don't know why it's not working. python 2.6.6.
sys.argv looks like this [filename,names',"J.J.", "April", 'years',25,29] – Shuman Mar 26 '14
at 6:39

3 This works well, but don't forget to escape quotes, otherwise Python will never see them. For
example, I had to do this --names "{\"names\": [\"J.J.\", \"April\"], \"years\": [25, 29]}"
– cjbarth May 11 '15 at 20:35

note the single quotes around the argument - which obviates the need to escape double quotes at the
command line. – chander Apr 7 '16 at 18:53

@chander That doesn't seem to work, for example, submitting arguments in PyCharm. I had to use
escaping. – Evan Zamir Apr 6 '18 at 19:12

@EvanZamir - note that (generally) in a shell, you need to escape quotes if they appear in your quoted
string. In my example, I quote the JSON data with single quotes, and the json string itself uses double
quotes, thereby obviating the need for quotes. If you mix quotes (use double quotes to quote the
argument, and double quotes inside), then the shell will require it to be escaped, otherwise the first
double quote it encounters is considered the "closing quote" for the argument. YMMV since the
behavior you are experiencing is a function of the shell, not of python. – chander Apr 9 '18 at 20:39

Here's another method using stdin . That's the method you want for a json cgi interface (i.e.
having a web server pass the request to your script):
12
Python:

import json, sys

request = json.load( sys.stdin )
...

To test your script from a Linux terminal:

echo '{ "key1": "value 1", "key2": "value 2" }' | python myscript.py

To test your script from a Windows terminal:

echo { "key1": "value 1", "key2": "value 2" } | python myscript.py

edited Jul 12 '19 at 8:29 answered Apr 6 '16 at 21:17

Moses BuvinJ
435 3 12 6,879 3 56 72

3 of 6 10/29/2020, 6:39 PM
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I started off with @chander's excellent answer, but was running into issues with special
character escaping, both at the shell/command level and within the python script. Saving the
1 JSON to a file and then passing that filename as a parameter to the script would be a possible
solution, but in my situation that was going to be rather complicated.

So instead I decided to url encode the string at the argument level and decode it inside the
script. This means that whatever is calling the python script needs to url-encode the
Python
command-line argument that is the JSON string. There are numerous online tools that let you
sandbox with url-encoding a string. In my case, a nodejs script invokes the python script call
and can easily url encode the JSON .

Inside the Python script, it looks like this (you don't have to use argparse , but I like it):

import json
import argparse
from urllib.parse import unquote

# Set up CLI Arguments

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()

# Required Arguments
parser.add_argument("-c", "--config", required=True,
help="JSON configuration string for this operation")

# Grab the Arguments

args = parser.parse_args()

jsonString = unquote(args.config)

print(jsonString)

config = json.loads(jsonString)

print(config)

answered Oct 16 '19 at 20:28

Kohanz
1,352 12 33

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Follow this steps to read either JSON or Dictionary as Command Line Argument without even
Escaping the Double or single quotes for Python:
0
1. Import the Windows32 API module for python like this:
import win32.win32api

If you don't have the module installed, then type: pip install pywin32 to install this module
in your machine.

2. Reading the command line arguments will be done by this line, the value of the command
line arguments will be stored as a string in cmdArguments variable:

cmdArguments = win32.win32api.GetCommandLine()

3. It is always a good practise to pass the JSON/Dictionary in the last argument in the
command line arguments, so suppose if you have the JSON/Dictionary passed as last
argument in command line, then the following line can fetch the JSON/Dictionary as a
separate argument and the JSON/Dictionary will be stored in a variable named jsonstr
like this:

jsonstr = ' '.join(cmdArguments.split(' ')[4:])

Technically, the object gets split into separate arguments due to whitespaces and we need
to combine it to make it as a single argument.

4. Now, if you print the value of jsonstr then you will get the same JSON/Dictionary that was
passed in the command line arguments section.

The complete example Code for this is:

import json
import win32.win32api
cmdArguments = win32.win32api.GetCommandLine()
jsonstr = ' '.join(cmdArguments.split(' ')[4:])
print(json.loads(jsonstr)) #To ensure that same JSON/Dictionary object is printed,
json.loads() is used to convert JSON to DICT, you can ignore json.loads() if you want
JSON object.

5. The example command line arguments would be like this, where NameOfProgram is the
name of the python script:

py <NameOfProgram.py> {"Name":"Sample Name","Salary":"20 k","Class":"First-Class"}

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