Command line

Reference: the sextile command, which serves or draws any application named the way an ASGI server names one — module:name, a Sextile or a factory that returns one.

sextile serve your_service:app
sextile render your_service:app --page 82489493

sextile serve

Answers calls from terminals on a TCP port.

Option	Default	Does
--host	127.0.0.1	the address to listen on
--port	16650	the port to listen on
--idle-timeout SECONDS	900	release a caller who says nothing this long; 0 holds the line indefinitely
--warn-after SECONDS	half the idle timeout	warn a silent caller with a draining bar; 0 for no warning
--max-connections N	64	how many callers may be on the line at once; 0 for no ceiling

sextile render

Draws one frame to standard output and, to standard error, where each key would lead — the quickest check that a menu is wired up. Exits 0 when it drew, 2 where the page, frame or number is not there.

Option	Default	Does
--page NUMBER		the page to draw, 1 or 82489493
--frame N	0	which frame of a page that runs to several
--form FORM	ansi	how to draw it
--no-colour		suppress the ANSI colour

--form	draws
ansi	colour, as the Beeb would draw it
grid	the character and attribute layers
bytes	the wire stream, as a hex dump
html	a self-contained web page, drawn with Bedstead

Building your own

A service with its own command line builds a click.Group and adds the pieces sextile itself uses. standard_commands(load) returns the render and serve commands to add to it, given a load that builds the application; its options= are added to both, for a flag such as a database path, and page_example= sets what render --page’s help shows. form_options and listening_options add the option tables above to a command of your own, load_application resolves a module:name, and render_page and run_service carry out the two commands. See sextile.cli.

import click
from sextile.cli import CONTEXT_SETTINGS, standard_commands

@click.group(context_settings=CONTEXT_SETTINGS)
def cli() -> None: ...

for command in standard_commands(lambda context: build_application(...)):
    cli.add_command(command)

Why a module:name: the framework serves an application it is told about at the command line rather than one it imports, so a service is a library the sextile command drives, not a program that reaches back into the framework.