How to differentiate between string and other args

Question

I am trying to parse arguments in python code sent from slack... what does this mean is when someone types a command in slack I want to differentiate based on string and other args.

for eg in slack if I use !command inc-number some string and then sometimes !command inc-number word how could I differentiate both

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def update(self,*args):

    inc = args[0]
    id = self.getincsysid(inc) # this func gets the sysid of inc to be update in servicenow.

    request = 'api/now/table/incident/'
    service_now_url = service now url

    url = service_now_url + request + id
    headers = {"Accept": "application/json"}

    # I am stuck here how to differentiate if args1 is a string.
    if args[1] == 'string': #do below 
        requests.put(url, auth=(user, pwd), headers=headers, json= 
    {'comments': args})
        return 'inc updated'
    elif args[1]=='word':
        impact = 'imapct1'
        criticality= 'urgency1'
        requests.put(url, auth=(user, pwd), headers=headers, json={'impact': 
    impact, 'criticality': urgency})

    else:
        return 'none matched'

If you're asking how you can differentiate **a string** from **a word**, you can't (unless you have some other info): can we refine the question as differentiate **a string with spaces** and **a string without spaces**? — Gsk, Jul 05 '18 at 13:31
so what i am sending from slack is !command incnumber work done (this is going to notes field)and in another case, I am doing !command incnumber p1 — Muks, Jul 05 '18 at 13:37

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 05 '18 at 13:39

0

If you're testing if args[1] is a string use

if type(args[1]) = str:

answered Jul 05 '18 at 13:39

jc1850

1,101
7
16

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 05 '18 at 13:46

It is pretty difficult to differentiate a word from a string, mainly because a word IS a string.
If we take as an example for a word the string "p1" and an example for a phrase the string "work done", we may define a word as a set of one or more characters not containing a space, and a phrase as a set of words separed by a space.

Starting by this assumption, our args[1] is a phrase if contains at least one space (we should also verify that it contains at least 2 characters...), else it's a word if it contains at least 1 character, else is something wrong:

if " " in args[1]: #do below 
    requests.put(url, auth=(user, pwd), headers=headers, json= 
{'comments': args})
    return 'inc updated'
elif len(args[1])>0:
    impact = 'imapct1'
    criticality= 'urgency1'
    requests.put(url, auth=(user, pwd), headers=headers, json={'impact': 
impact, 'criticality': urgency})

else:
    return 'none matched'

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 05 '18 at 15:25

Slack will always return the complete user input as one big string. So you need to implement a parse to transform that string into arguments in accordance with your syntax design.

They are many ways to approach this. I usually use a syntax where a space is used as delimiter to identify each argument plus " can be used to encapsulate a longer sentence with multiple words as one argument.

I guess your best approach would be to use existing parsers. e.g. shlex to parse the input from Slack.

See also this answer for examples on how shlex works.

splitting arg is not a issue , i am facing issue with how to tell my function that sometime fargs will be a string sometimes it can be just a letter or say a word. — Muks, Jul 06 '18 at 05:03

How to differentiate between string and other args

3 Answers3