Updated On 4.2.0

Crafter CLI

CrafterCMS provides Crafter CLI (Command Line Interface), a DevContentOps Toolkit, to support DevContentOps processes in CrafterCMS. The CLI allows you to authenticate with CrafterCMS and exercise its APIs via a Unix, Mac, or Windows command line interface.

Run the CLI in your terminal program, navigate to the bin folder CRAFTER_HOME/bin/cli/bin/. There you will find two versions of the tool:

crafter-cli: - for users on a Linux/macOS operating system
crafter-cli.bat - for users on a Windows operating system

When using the crafter-cli, we first need to setup the connection to CrafterCMS before we can use the other available commands. To setup the connection, run the add-environment command, provide a name, the url for a CrafterCMS authoring server and the authentication information.

For the example below, we’ll use local for the name, http://localhost:8080 for the url, and your access token for the authentication. See here for the steps on how to create a token. Leave the token blank, you will be prompted for the token after issuing the add-environment command:

➜  ./crafter-cli add-environment -e local -u http://localhost:8080 --token
Enter value for --token (The access token for authentication):
Environment added

After setting up the connection to CrafterCMS, you may now create sites or sync a remote repository from the command line, etc:

Here’s an example of creating a site:

➜  ./crafter-cli create-site -e local -s myeditorial --blueprint org.craftercms.blueprint.editorial
OK

Here’s an example of adding a remote to a site:

➜  ./crafter-cli add-remote -e local -s editorial -n origin -u http://github.com/john.doe/editorial.git
Created

Here’s an example of syncing to a remote repository:

➜  ./crafter-cli sync-to -e local -s editorial -n origin -b site-updates
OK

To view the available commands, type in ./crafter-cli -h

➜  ./crafter-cli -help
Usage: crafter-cli [-hV] [COMMAND]
  -h, --help      Show this help message and exit.
  -V, --version   Print version information and exit.
Commands:
  help                 Displays help information about the specified command
  add-environment      Adds the configuration to connect to CrafterCMS
  add-remote           Adds a remote repository to a site
  create-site          Creates a site from a blueprint or a remote repository
  list-remotes         List the remote repositories of a site
  sync-from            Sync the content of a site from a remote repository
  sync-to              Sync the content of a site to a remote repository
  list-sites           List the sites that the current user can access
  copy-plugin          Copies a plugin from a Studio local folder into a site
  create-user          Creates a user from command parameters or bulk create users from a CSV file
  list-users           Get all Studio users
  create-access-token  Creates an access token for the user
  publish-content      Publish content from a project or site.
  create-group         Creates a group from command parameters or bulk create groups from a CSV file
  list-groups          List all the groups or search for groups by keyword or sort by a field.

To view more information about each command, just enter ./crafter-cli <command>, for example:

➜  ./crafter-cli add-environment
Usage: crafter-cli add-environment --password [--config=path] -e=<environment>
                                [-p=<profile>] -u=<url> --username=<username>
Adds the configuration to connect to CrafterCMS
      --config=path         The folder to store configurations
  -e, --environment=<environment>
                            The name of the environment
  -p, --profile=<profile>   The name of the profile
      --password            The password for authentication
  -u, --url=<url>           The URL of the server
      --username=<username> The username for authentication

Crafter CLI for DevContentOps processes source code is managed in GitHub: https://github.com/craftercms/cli

Using cURL

In this section, we’ll show the basics of interacting with Crafter Studio APIs by performing the following:

Authentication
Get a list of projects under management
Write content to a project

We’ll use cURL, a ubiquitous Linux command tool as our client.

You can find the full Crafter Studio API for CrafterCMS here

Let’s begin:

Authentication

There are two authentication methods that can be used: JWT and HTTP Basic

JWT Authentication
Since 4.0.0
JWT is a widely adopted standard for secure authentication and is the preferred way. HTTP Basic is simple but not as secure as JWT and for that reason it is disabled by default. However, it can be very useful for local development environments.

In both authentication methods you need to know the credentials of a user with the right permissions depending on the operations that you need to execute. For this example we will generate a token for the admin user but in a real scenario you should create a user with the least amount of permissions possible.

Note

Not all users have the required permission manage_access_token to create access tokens. If the Token Management tool is not shown in the global menu you will need to request the permission or an access token from a system administrator.

If you already have an access token you can skip to step 5, otherwise follow all steps to create a new token:
1. Login to Crafter Studio
2. Open the Token Management tool
3. Create a new access token
  
  The only required field for the access token is the label to identify it, however, it is also recommended to set an expiration date to minimize the risk of lost or stolen tokens being used without being noticed.
  
  Once the expiration date is reached the access token will stop working automatically.
4. Copy the value of the access token
  
  The value of the access token will not be stored on the server, so it needs to be stored by the user in a safe place as it is impossible to recover it after it is created.
  
  If an access token is lost or exposed in any way it should be disabled or completely deleted to avoid any possible use.
5. Include the access token with all requests
  
  Most HTTP clients provide built-in support for access token athentication, in the case of cURL you will need to use the header option --header or -H
  
  curl -H 'Authentication: Bearer <access token>' ...
HTTP Basic Authentication

If HTTP Basic authentication is already enabled you can skip step 1 and start using the credentials:
1. Enable HTTP Basic auth and restart Crafter Studio
  
  Update the Crafter Studio configuration override: from Crafter Studio Global Menu > Global Config or directly from the global repository $CRAFTER_HOME/data/repos/global/configuration/studio-config-override.yaml
  
  Adding the following property:
```
# Indicates if HTTP Basic auth should be enabled for the API
studio.security.http.basic.enabled: true
```
2. Include the credentials with all requests
  
  Most HTTP clients provide an easy way to use HTTP Basic, in the case of cURL you can use the user options --user or -u
  
  curl -u <username>:<password> ...

Get a list of projects under management

We’ll get a list of sites the user is authorized to work with using the API getCurrentUserSites

curl <authentication option> -X GET http://localhost:8080/studio/api/2/users/admin/sites

After issuing the cURL command you will get a response that contains sites your user has access to:

{
  "response": {
    "code": 0,
    "message": "OK",
    "remedialAction": "",
    "documentationUrl": ""
},
"total": 2,
"offset": 0,
"limit": 10,
"sites": [
  {
    "siteId": "hello",
    "uuid": "e7153d93-3879-41d5-8e91-408a1bd79d74",
    "name": "hello",
    "desc": null,
    "state": "READY"
  },
  {
    "siteId": "my-editorial",
    "uuid": "a82278d6-535c-4e0c-9013-95284e10a993",
    "name": "My Editorial",
    "desc": null,
    "state": "READY"
  }
  ]
}

The response above contains a number of projects. In the next call we will write a content object to one of the projects (editorialcom.) To do this we need the site ID. We get this from the response above: editorialcom

Write content to a project

We’ll now write content to the Editorial com Project using the API writeContent

curl <authentication option> -d "<page><content-type>/page/category-landing</content-type><display-template>/templates/web/pages/category-landing.ftl</display-template><merge-strategy>inherit-levels</merge-strategy><file-name>index.xml</file-name><folder-name>test3</folder-name><internal-name>test3</internal-name><disabled >false</disabled></page>" -X POST "http://localhost:8080/studio/api/1/services/api/1/content/write-content.json?site=editorialcom&phase=onSave&path=/site/website/test3/index.xml&fileName=index.xml&user=admin&contentType=/page/category-landing&unlock=true"

In the call above note:

We are passing in content as the POST body. The content is in XML format. In CrafterCMS, content objects are stored as simple XML documents. We are passing a number of parameters that tell CrafterCMS where and how to store the content in the repository

Using the above examples as a guide, we can now interact with any Crafter Studio API found here