Check if argparse optional argument is set or not

I think that optional arguments (specified with --) are initialized to None if they are not supplied. So you can test with is not None. Try the example below:

import argparse

def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="My Script")
    parser.add_argument("--myArg")
    args, leftovers = parser.parse_known_args()

    if args.myArg is not None:
        print "myArg has been set (value is %s)" % args.myArg

You can check an optionally passed flag with store_true and store_false argument action options:

import argparse

argparser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
argparser.add_argument('-flag', dest='flag_exists', action='store_true')

print argparser.parse_args([])
# Namespace(flag_exists=False)
print argparser.parse_args(['-flag'])
# Namespace(flag_exists=True)

This way, you don't have to worry about checking by conditional is not None. You simply check for True or False. Read more about these options in the docs here

As @Honza notes is None is a good test. It's the default default, and the user can't give you a string that duplicates it.

You can specify another default='mydefaultvalue', and test for that. But what if the user specifies that string? Does that count as setting or not?

You can also specify default=argparse.SUPPRESS. Then if the user does not use the argument, it will not appear in the args namespace. But testing that might be more complicated:

parser.add_argument("--foo", default=argparse.SUPPRESS)

# ...

args.foo # raises an AttributeError
hasattr(args, 'foo')  # returns False
getattr(args, 'foo', 'other') # returns 'other'

Internally the parser keeps a list of seen_actions, and uses it for 'required' and 'mutually_exclusive' testing. But it isn't available to you out side of parse_args.

I think using the option default=argparse.SUPPRESS makes most sense. Then, instead of checking if the argument is not None, one checks if the argument is in the resulting namespace.

Example:

import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument("--foo", default=argparse.SUPPRESS)
ns = parser.parse_args()

print("Parsed arguments: {}".format(ns))
print("foo in namespace?: {}".format("foo" in ns))

Usage:

$ python argparse_test.py --foo 1
Parsed arguments: Namespace(foo='1')
foo in namespace?: True

Argument is not supplied:

$ python argparse_test.py
Parsed arguments: Namespace()
foo in namespace?: False