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Nagios-Plugin-0.15
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/ Nagios::Plugin::Getopt

NAME

Nagios::Plugin::Getopt - OO perl module providing standardised argument processing for Nagios plugins

VERSION

This documentation applies to version 0.01 of Nagios::Plugin::Getopt.

SYNOPSIS

use Nagios::Plugin::Getopt;

# Instantiate object (usage is mandatory)
$ng = Nagios::Plugin::Getopt->new(
  usage => "Usage: %s -H <host> -w <warning_threshold> 
-c <critical threshold>",
  version => '0.01',
  url => 'http://www.openfusion.com.au/labs/nagios/',
  blurb => 'This plugin tests various stuff.', 
);

# Add argument - named parameters (spec and help are mandatory)
$ng->arg(
  spec => 'critical|c=s',
  help => qq(-c, --critical=INTEGER\n   Exit with CRITICAL status if fewer than INTEGER foobars are free),
  required => 1,
  default => 10,
);

# Add argument - positional parameters - arg spec, help text, 
#   default value, required? (first two mandatory)
$ng->arg(
  'warning|w=s',
  qq(-w, --warning=INTEGER\n   Exit with WARNING status if fewer than INTEGER foobars are free),
  5,
  1);

# Parse arguments and process standard ones (e.g. usage, help, version)
$ng->getopts;

# Access arguments using named accessors or or via the generic get()
print $ng->warning;
print $ng->get('critical');

DESCRIPTION

Nagios::Plugin::Getopt is an OO perl module providing standardised and simplified argument processing for Nagios plugins. It implements a number of standard arguments itself (--help, --version, --usage, --timeout, --verbose, and their short form counterparts), produces standardised nagios plugin help output, and allows additional arguments to be easily defined.

CONSTRUCTOR

# Instantiate object (usage is mandatory)
$ng = Nagios::Plugin::Getopt->new(
  usage => 'Usage: %s --hello',
  version => '0.01',
);

The Nagios::Plugin::Getopt constructor accepts the following named arguments:

usage (required)

Short usage message used with --usage/-? and with missing required arguments, and included in the longer --help output. Can include a '%s' sprintf placeholder which will be replaced with the plugin name e.g.

usage => qq(Usage: %s -H <hostname> -p <ports> [-v]),

might be displayed as:

$ ./check_tcp_range --usage
Usage: check_tcp_range -H <hostname> -p <ports> [-v]
version (required)

Plugin version number, included in the --version/-V output, and in the longer --help output. e.g.

$ ./check_tcp_range --version
check_tcp_range 0.2 [http://www.openfusion.com.au/labs/nagios/]
url

URL for info about this plugin, included in the --version/-V output, and in the longer --help output (see preceding 'version' example).

blurb

Short plugin description, included in the longer --help output (see below for an example).

license

License text, included in the longer --help output (see below for an example). By default, this is set to the standard nagios plugins GPL license text:

This nagios plugin is free software, and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. 
It may be used, redistributed and/or modified under the terms of the GNU 
General Public Licence (see http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt).

Provide your own to replace this text in the help output.

extra

Extra text to be appended at the end of the longer --help output.

plugin

Plugin name. This defaults to the basename of your plugin, which is usually correct, but you can set it explicitly if not.

timeout

Timeout period in seconds, overriding the standard timeout default (15 seconds).

The full --help output has the following form:

version string

license string

blurb

usage string

options list

extra text

The 'blurb' and 'extra text' sections are omitted if not supplied. For example:

$ ./check_tcp_range -h
check_tcp_range 0.2 [http://www.openfusion.com.au/labs/nagios/]

This nagios plugin is free software, and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. 
It may be used, redistributed and/or modified under the terms of the GNU 
General Public Licence (see http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt).

This plugin tests arbitrary ranges/sets of tcp ports for a host.

Usage: check_tcp_range -H <hostname> -p <ports> [-v]

Options:
 -h, --help
   Print detailed help screen
 -V, --version
   Print version information
 -H, --hostname=ADDRESS
   Host name or IP address
 -p, --ports=STRING
   Port numbers to check. Format: comma-separated, colons or hyphens for ranges,
   no spaces e.g. 8700:8705,8710-8715,8760 
 -t, --timeout=INTEGER
   Seconds before plugin times out (default: 15)
 -v, --verbose
   Show details for command-line debugging (can repeat up to 3 times)

ARGUMENTS

You can define arguments for your plugin using the arg() method, which supports both named and positional arguments. In both cases the 'spec' and 'help' arguments are required, while the 'default' and 'required' arguments are optional:

# Define --hello argument (named parameters)
$ng->arg(
  spec => 'hello=s', 
  help => "--hello\n   Hello string",
  required => 1,
);

# Define --hello argument (positional parameters)
#   Parameter order is 'spec', 'help', 'default', 'required?'
$ng->arg('hello=s', "--hello\n   Hello string", undef, 1);

The 'spec' argument (the first argument in the positional variant) is a Getopt::Long argument specification. See Getopt::Long for the details, but basically it is a series of one or more argument names for this argument (separated by '|'), suffixed with an '=<type>' indicator if the argument takes a value. '=s' indicates a string argument; '=i' indicates an integer argument; appending an '@' indicates multiple such arguments are accepted; and so on. The following are some examples:

hello=s
hello|h=s
ports|port|p=i
exclude|X=s@
verbose|v+

The 'help' argument is a string displayed in the --help option list output. If the string contains a '%s' it will be formatted via sprintf with the 'default' as the argument i.e.

sprintf($help, $default)

A gotcha is that standard percentage signs also need to be escaped (i.e. '%%') in this case.

The 'default' argument is the default value to be given to this parameter if none is explicitly supplied.

The 'required' argument is a boolean used to indicate that this argument is mandatory (Nagios::Plugin::Getopt will exit with your usage message and a 'Missing argument' indicator if any required arguments are not supplied).

Note that --help lists your arguments in the order they are defined, so you might want to order your arg() calls accordingly.

GETOPTS

The main parsing and processing functionality is provided by the getopts() method, which takes no arguments:

# Parse and process arguments
$ng->getopts;

This parses the command line arguments passed to your plugin using Getopt::Long and the builtin and provided argument specifications. Flags and argument values are recorded within the object, and can be accessed either using the generic get() accessor, or using named accessors corresponding to your argument names. For example:

print $ng->get('hello');
print $ng->hello();

if ($ng->verbose) {
  # ...
}

if ($ng->get('ports') =~ m/:/) {
  # ...
}

Note that where you have defined alternate argument names, the first is considered the citation form. All the builtin arguments are available using their long variant names.

BUILTIN PROCESSING

The getopts() method also handles processing of the immediate builtin arguments, namely --usage, --version, --help, as well as checking all required arguments have been supplied, so you don't have to handle those yourself. This means that your plugin will exit from the getopts() call in these cases - if you want to catch that you can run getopts() within an eval{}.

getopts() also sets up a default ALRM timeout handler so you can use an

alarm $ng->timeout;

around any blocking operations within your plugin (which you are free to override if you want to use a custom timeout message).

SEE ALSO

Nagios::Plugin, Getopt::Long

AUTHOR

Gavin Carr <gavin@openfusion.com.au>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2006 by the Nagios Plugin Development Team.

This module is free software. It may be used, redistributed and/or modified under either the terms of the Perl Artistic License (see http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html) or the GNU General Public Licence (see http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt).