[IPython-dev] Magics that multiplex

[David Quigley]

I'm working on implementing a magic that multiplexes its behavior based 
on the first token of the line after the magic. An example of a tool 
which would do something like this is semanage or ip which based on the 
second token ( port, login, fcontext, etc...) Behaves differently. I'm 
doing it this way because these commands really belong to the same 
component and are generic enough in name that they will appear again. 
For example I want to have server start, server stop, server status be 
magic commands. Is there functionality to do this already in the magics 
subsystem? I looked at the parse_options code in Magics and it doesn't 
seem to handle that kind of usecase (although I'd be glad to be proven 
wrong). Alternatively I've used argparse in the past with subparsers to 
do just that. argparse.ArgumentParser can have subparsers added to it to 
then process arguments based on the second token in the line. Is there 
anything incorrect about using an option parser that isn't 
Magics.parse_options? Is there an already existing way to do this? I'm 
using the rel-0.13 tag from git but can use -dev if necessary.

Dave