python -m http.server came in handy so many times!
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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Easier than grepping, you can just look at the standard library docs: https://docs.python.org/3/library/
How is that easier? It doesn't look like it provides a list of which modules have a __name__ == "__main__" block.
No. But, it does provide a list of all stdlib libraries and those, like gzip, that are intended to be compatible with the CLI tend to have explicit documentation showing usage (ex. https://docs.python.org/3/library/gzip.html) and provides any other contextual info related to using the library.
Don't get me wrong, grepping through the code is a great way of building skills needed as a professional. Really, I have to do this kind of thing multiple times every week at work. It is, however, also worth noting that Python only uses an "honor system" for public/private functions, methods, and classes so modules having an "if name == 'main'" block doesn't necessarily mean that they are appropriate to use as CLI tools. They might be but, without documentation to back it up, it's an "at your own risk" situation.
I use json.tool a lot to format JSON directly in vim. Simply highlight the text you want to format and run :!python3 -m json.tool. There are probably plugins to do this too, but doing it this way is probably the simplest, unless vim has a built-in for it.
Could probably do the same with :! jq . It's a bit shorter.
Yeah, I knew someone was going to say that. Usually it's more likely that Python is installed than jq - especially on servers. But yes, that would definitely work too.
Sure, I'm just not sure when I'd ever run into that. Either I'm doing it a lot and installing jq is reasonable, or I'm not allowed on the server anyway and need to copy/paste from logs.
I used to use python -m json.tool a lot, but I haven't needed to in many years.
Pro tip: you can ignore filenames with ripgrep using -g "!test/". That should speed things up a bit.
CLITools can be hard to find, but when you do it's worth the effort.
python -m http.server has been a very useful tool to me, to test if a server is accessible.
Nice work!