How do I parse command line arguments in Java?

Check these out:

• http://commons.apache.org/cli/
• http://www.martiansoftware.com/jsap/
• http://picocli.info/

Or roll your own:

• http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Scanner.html

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For instance, this is how you use commons-cli to parse 2 string arguments:

import org.apache.commons.cli.*;

public class Main {


    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        Options options = new Options();

        Option input = new Option("i", "input", true, "input file path");
        input.setRequired(true);
        options.addOption(input);

        Option output = new Option("o", "output", true, "output file");
        output.setRequired(true);
        options.addOption(output);

        CommandLineParser parser = new DefaultParser();
        HelpFormatter formatter = new HelpFormatter();
        CommandLine cmd;

        try {
            cmd = parser.parse(options, args);
        } catch (ParseException e) {
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
            formatter.printHelp("utility-name", options);

            System.exit(1);
        }

        String inputFilePath = cmd.getOptionValue("input");
        String outputFilePath = cmd.getOptionValue("output");

        System.out.println(inputFilePath);
        System.out.println(outputFilePath);

    }

}

usage from command line:

$> java -jar target/my-utility.jar -i asd                                                                                       
Missing required option: o

usage: utility-name
 -i,--input <arg>    input file path
 -o,--output <arg>   output file

Take a look at the more recent JCommander.

I created it. I’m happy to receive questions or feature requests.

I have been trying to maintain a list of Java CLI parsers.

• Airline
  • Active Fork: https://github.com/rvesse/airline
• argparse4j
• argparser
• args4j
• clajr
• cli-parser
• CmdLn
• Commandline
• DocOpt.java
• dolphin getopt
• DPML CLI (Jakarta Commons CLI2 fork)
• Dr. Matthias Laux
• Jakarta Commons CLI
• jargo
• jargp
• jargs
• java-getopt
• jbock
• JCLAP
• jcmdline
• jcommander
• jcommando
• jewelcli (written by me)
• JOpt simple
• jsap
• naturalcli
• Object Mentor CLI article (more about refactoring and TDD)
• parse-cmd
• ritopt
• Rop
• TE-Code Command
• picocli has ANSI colorized usage help and autocomplete