Picocli Spring Boot Starter - Enables Spring Dependency Injection in Picocli Commands

Picocli Spring Boot Starter contains components and documentation for building command line applications with Spring and picocli.

Dependency Management

Picocli 4.7.4 has been tested with Spring Boot 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 up to 2.7.5.

Add the following dependency:

Maven:

<dependency>
  <groupId>info.picocli</groupId>
  <artifactId>picocli-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
  <version>4.7.4</version>
</dependency>

Gradle:

dependencies {
    implementation "info.picocli:picocli-spring-boot-starter:4.7.4"
}

This will bring in the info.picocli:picocli and org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter dependencies.

Example Application

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;

@SpringBootApplication
public class MySpringApp {

    @Bean
    ServiceDependency dependency() {
        return new ServiceDependency();
    }

    @Bean
    SomeService someService(ServiceDependency dependency) {
        return new SomeService(dependency);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.exit(SpringApplication.exit(SpringApplication.run(MySpringApp.class, args)));
    }
}

import picocli.CommandLine;
import picocli.CommandLine.IFactory;

import org.springframework.boot.CommandLineRunner;
import org.springframework.boot.ExitCodeGenerator;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class MyApplicationRunner implements CommandLineRunner, ExitCodeGenerator {

	private final MyCommand myCommand;

	private final IFactory factory; // auto-configured to inject PicocliSpringFactory

	private int exitCode;

	public MyApplicationRunner(MyCommand myCommand, IFactory factory) {
		this.myCommand = myCommand;
		this.factory = factory;
	}

	@Override
	public void run(String... args) throws Exception {
		exitCode = new CommandLine(myCommand, factory).execute(args);
	}

	@Override
	public int getExitCode() {
		return exitCode;
	}
}

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
import picocli.CommandLine.Command;
import picocli.CommandLine.Option;
import picocli.CommandLine.Parameters;

import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.Callable;

@Component
@Command(name = "mycommand", mixinStandardHelpOptions = true, subcommands = MyCommand.Sub.class)
public class MyCommand implements Callable<Integer> {
    @Option(names = "-x", description = "optional option")
    private String x;

    @Parameters(description = "positional params")
    private List<String> positionals;

    @Override
    public Integer call() {
        System.out.printf("mycommand was called with -x=%s and positionals: %s%n", x, positionals);
        return 23;
    }

    @Component
    @Command(name = "sub", mixinStandardHelpOptions = true, subcommands = MyCommand.SubSub.class,
            exitCodeOnExecutionException = 34)
    static class Sub implements Callable<Integer> {
        @Option(names = "-y", description = "optional option")
        private String y;

        @Parameters(description = "positional params")
        private List<String> positionals;

        @Override
        public Integer call() {
            System.out.printf("mycommand sub was called with -y=%s and positionals: %s%n", y, positionals);
            return 33;
        }
    }

    @Component
    @Command(name = "subsub", mixinStandardHelpOptions = true,
            exitCodeOnExecutionException = 44)
    static class SubSub implements Callable<Integer> {
        @Option(names = "-z", description = "optional option")
        private String z;

        @Autowired
        private SomeService service;

        @Override
        public Integer call() {
            System.out.printf("mycommand sub subsub was called with -z=%s. Service says: '%s'%n", z, service.service());
            return 43;
        }
    }
}

Testing

See this example.