robpkelly / lsapi

A quick script to list the public names exposed by a Python package

lsapi

A quick script to display the public names exposed by a Python package as a tree.

setup

$ sudo pip install -r requirements.txt
$ ln -s $PWD/lsapi.py ~/bin/lsapi

usage

$ lsapi -h
usage: lsapi [-h] [-p] [-m] [-a] [-c] [-x] [-s] [-A] [-u] [-U] [-C]
             [-D MAX_DEPTH]
             package

Recursively list the public names exposed by a Python package, formatted as a
readable tree

positional arguments:
  package               package (or sub-package) to inspect

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p, --private         show private names
  -m, --magic           show magic names
  -a, --all             show all names (equivalent to `-pm')
  -c, --canonical       try to show names under the namespace where they are
                        defined
  -x, --external        show names exposed by packages that are not under the
                        given root package
  -s, --signatures      show signatures for callables (functions, methods,
                        classes)
  -A, --aliases         show aliased (imported) namespaces
  -u, --ugly            use basic ASCII for tree drawing (for terminal
                        emulators with spotty unicode support)
  -U, --no-tree         do not draw trees
  -C, --no-color        do not colorize output
  -D MAX_DEPTH, --max-depth MAX_DEPTH
                        do not show names nested beyond this depth from the
                        given root package (which has depth 0)

notes

lsapi inspects packages by loading them through python's import mechanism and inspecting the result, instead of compiling and inspecting the AST. This allows for limited operability with packages distributed as wheels and C-language extensions, but also means that names imported elsewhere will likely be listed under the "wrong" namespace. In other words, this script tries to be complete and correct, but may be counterintuitive. With the -c flag, lsapi will attempt to show names where they were canonically defined, but it can't catch everything.

If you see strange symbols in lsapi's output, like �, ▯, or mojibake, it's probably because your terminal emulator doesn't know how to render the glyphs lsapi uses to draw trees. Use the -u or -U flags, but also consider switching to a modern terminal emulator.