How to add aliases to an input dictionary?

Recently I started a project. My goal was it to have a script, which, once launched, could be able to control actions on the hosts computer if an instruction was send via email. (I wanted this so I could start tasks which take a long time to complete while I’m away from home)

I started programming and not long after I could send emails, receive emails and analyze their content and take actions responding to the content in the email.

I did this by using an input dictionary, which looked like this:

contents_of_the_email = "!screenn!wait 5n!hotkey alt tab"


def wait(sec):
    print(f"I did nothing for {sec} seconds!")


def no_operation():
    print("Nothing")


def screenshot():
    print("I took an image of the screen and send it to your email adress!")


def hotkey(*args):
    print(f"I pressed the keys {', '.join(args)} at the same time")


FUNCTIONS = {
    '':no_operation,
    '!screen': screenshot,
    '!hotkey': hotkey,
    '!wait': wait
}


def call_command(command):
    function, *args = command.split(' ')
    FUNCTIONS[function](*args)


for line in contents_of_the_email.split("n"):
    call_command(line)

In total I have around 25 functions each with its own response. I replaced the actual code for the commands with simple print statements as they are not needed to understand or replicate my problem.

I then wanted to add aliases for the command, so for example you would be able to type “!ss” instead of “!screen”. I did achieve this using another line in the dictionary:

FUNCTIONS = {
    '':no_operation,
    '!screen': screenshot,
    '!ss':screenshot,
    '!hotkey': hotkey,
    '!wait': wait
}

But I didn’t like this. It would fill up the whole dictionary if I did it for every alias I am planning to add and it would make my code very messy. Is there any way to define aliases for commands separately and still keep the dictionary clean and simple? I would desire something like this in a separate aliases.txt file:

screen: "!screen", "!ss","!screenshot","!image"
wait: "!wait","!pause","!sleep","!w"
hotkey: "!hk","!tk"

If this is possible in python I would really appreciate to know!

Answer

You can use following solution:

import json
contents_of_the_email = "!screenn!wait 5n!hotkey alt tab"


def wait(sec):
    print(f"I did nothing for {sec} seconds!")


def no_operation():
    print("Nothing")


def screenshot():
    print("I took an image of the screen and send it to your email address!")


def hotkey(*args):
    print(f"I pressed the keys {', '.join(args)} at the same time")


# FUNCTIONS DICT FROM JSON
with open("aliases.json") as json_file:
    aliases_json = json.load(json_file)

FUNCTIONS = {}
for func_name, aliases in aliases_json.items():
    FUNCTIONS.update({alias: globals()[func_name] for alias in aliases})


def call_command(command):
    function, *args = command.split(' ')
    FUNCTIONS[function](*args)


for line in contents_of_the_email.split("n"):
    call_command(line)

aliases.json:

{
  "screenshot": ["!screen", "!ss","!screenshot","!image"],
  "wait": ["!wait","!pause","!sleep","!w"],
  "hotkey": ["!hk","!tk", "!hotkey"]
}

is that what you looking for?