fix: replace bare assert with user-friendly error in _guess_method

Author: funsaized

httpie/cli/argparser.py

@@ -413,7 +413,14 @@ def _guess_method(self):
         """
         if self.args.method is None:
             # Invoked as `http URL'.
-            assert not self.args.request_items
+            if self.args.request_items:
+                self.error(
+                    'no HTTP method or URL detected but request items found. '
+                    'Please make sure that the URL comes right after '
+                    'the optional METHOD:\n'
+                    '    http [METHOD] URL [REQUEST_ITEM ...]\n'
+                    'See https://httpie.io/docs/cli for more information.'
+                )
             if self.has_input_data:
                 self.args.method = HTTP_POST
             else:

tests/test_cli.py

@@ -316,6 +316,31 @@ def test_guess_when_method_set_but_invalid_and_item_exists(self):
                 key='old_item', value='b', sep='=', orig='old_item=b'),
         ]
 
+    def test_guess_when_method_not_set_but_request_items_present(self):
+        """When method is None but request_items exist, _guess_method
+        should produce a user-friendly error instead of an AssertionError.
+
+        This state can occur when argparse misassigns positional arguments
+        due to intermixed optional and positional arguments (e.g.,
+        ``http POST --auth-type bearer --auth token URL``).
+        See https://github.com/httpie/cli/issues/1614
+        """
+        self.parser.args = argparse.Namespace()
+        self.parser.args.method = None
+        self.parser.args.url = 'http://example.com/'
+        self.parser.args.request_items = [
+            KeyValueArg(
+                key='test', value='header', sep=':', orig='test:header')
+        ]
+        self.parser.args.ignore_stdin = False
+        self.parser.env = MockEnvironment()
+        # Patch print_usage since the parser isn't fully initialized in
+        # unit tests (no spec attribute).
+        self.parser.print_usage = lambda *a, **kw: None
+        with pytest.raises(SystemExit) as exc_info:
+            self.parser._guess_method()
+        assert exc_info.value.code == 2
+
 
 class TestNoOptions: