Parse and Execute in separated steps?

[alecthomas]

Parse and Execute in separated steps?

[alecthomas]

Can you expand on what the use case for this is?

[edgard]

One of the most common case for me is loading a config file using a flag: --config=/etc/whatever.json

If I use Dispatch/Action, I have to initialize the config file load from inside each function dispatched.

[alecthomas]

Okay. So it seems like you'd be okay with all the values being fully populated before the Dispatch function is called?

If so, that is good news, because that's what will be happening here soon! At the moment value population, dispatch and validation all occur intermingled (as you've found), but this will be split into three distinct passes.

[edgard]

Sure! It does help a lot. I would still need to call my own initialization from inside the functions, but at least that makes it possible to do so!

I think this might impact other use cases as both codegangsta's cli and cobra implements something similar:

https://github.com/codegangsta/cli/blob/master/app.go#L35-L40

https://github.com/spf13/cobra/blob/master/cobra.go#L34-L39

spf13/cobra#53

[alecthomas]

For your --config=file flag, a more idiomatic solution would be to make a custom parser. Create one that returns your parsed config structure.

[alecthomas]

I think what you want to achieve should be possible in v2-unstable by using the top-level Application.Action(f) callback. This would let you load configuration settings before any other actions are called.

[edgard]

Awesome!! Thank you very much! 👍