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App Services CLI

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  • Overview
  • Installation
  • Authentication
  • The .mdb Directory
  • CLI Profiles
  • Options
  • Related Commands

The Atlas App Services Command Line Interface (appservices) allows you to programmatically manage your Applications.

With the App Services CLI, you can create or update Apps from a local directory as well as export existing applications to a local directory.

App Services CLI is available on npm. To install the CLI on your system, ensure that you have Node.js installed and then run the following command in your shell:

npm install -g atlas-app-services-cli

To use the App Services CLI, you must authenticate. To authenticate, you must generate an API Key.

1

The MongoDB Cloud Access Manager allows you to manage access to your project for users, teams, and API Keys. Use the Project Access Manager by clicking the Project Access tab on the access manager dropdown on your screen's top left-hand side.

Click Access Manager
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2

Project Users can log in with a Project API Key. Create a project API Key by clicking the grey Create API Key button on the right-hand side of the Project Access Manager.

Click Access Manager
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Clicking this button navigates you to the "Create API Key" screen. Set a description for your key.

For write access, the CLI requires an API key with "Project Owner" permissions. For read-only access, you can use "Project Read Only". Use the Project Permissions dropdown to select the appropriate permissions for your use case.

Copy the public key to use later in order to log in. Click next to continue configuring your key details.

Click Access Manager
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3

Copy your Private Key to a safe location for later use. For security, the Private Key will not be visible again after initialization. Another security feature is the API Access List. Creating an API Access List entry ensures that API calls originate from permitted IPs.

The IP Address of the user who will be using the API Key is required to use the key. Click the Add Access List Entry button. Type in the IP Address or click the Use Current IP Address buttton and click save. Finally, click the done button on your screen's lower right-hand to finish setting up your API key.

Click Access Manager
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1

Using your newly created public and private key, log in by running the command below.

appservices login --api-key="<my api key>" --private-api-key="<my private api key>"

You should see the following result:

you have successfully logged in as <your public key>

When you use the App Services CLI to push or pull configuration files, the CLI stores information about the App you're working with in the .mdb directory of your application config. This allows the CLI to remember a specific deployment that your configuration files are associated with across multiple commands.

This directory is machine generated and you typically should not manually modify it. If you delete the .mdb directory, the CLI will no longer be able to associate your configuration files with a specific deployment. The CLI creates a new .mdb directory when you run a command that targets a specific deployment.

The CLI stores identifiers and configuration metadata in the .mdb/meta.json file, which has the following format:

{
"config_version": 20230101,
"app_id": "42249d526d97af5a287c1eae",
"group_id": "4b2cf422930196872221a2d4",
"client_app_id": "myapp-abcde"
}
Field
Description
config_version
number
The configuration file format version that all configuration files in the directory conform to. This is used to ensure that the CLI can read the configuration files.
app_id
string
The App's internal ObjectId value.
group_id
string
The Atlas Project ID that the App is associated with.
client_app_id
string
The human-readable Client App ID.

The CLI stores information about its users in a profile. This lets you run commands in a given context. For example, when you log in with an Atlas Admin API Key, the CLI stores the API Key and the current session access token. Then it reuses that token for subsequent commands until it expires.

You can set up multiple named profiles and choose a profile to use for any given CLI command. If you don't specify one, the CLI uses the default profile, which is a profile named default.

To specify a profile, add the --profile argument on any command. For example, to log in with a new profile named my-profile, run the following:

appservices login --profile my-profile

Once logged in, you can run other commands with the same profile:

appservices pull --remote=myapp-abcde --profile my-profile

You can list all profiles on your system with a CLI command:

appservices profiles list
Found 2 profile(s)
Profile API Key
---------- -----------------------------------------------
my-profile rjxerfwi (********-****-****-****-f00b471ec015)
default xkwwtlmj (********-****-****-****-f03b321dae23)

The CLI stores profiles on your computer in individual configuration files named after the profile. The location of the profile definitions depends on your system:

Operating System
Profile Directory
Unix / Linux
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/<profile>.yaml or $HOME/.config/<profile>.yaml
macOS
$HOME/Library/Application\ Support/appservices-cli/<profile>.yaml
Windows
%AppData%/<profile>.yaml
Name
Type
Required
Description
--profile
string
false
Specify your profile (Default value: "default") [Learn more]
--telemetry
string
false
Enable/Disable CLI usage tracking for your current profile (Default value: "on"; Allowed values: "on", "off")
-o, --output-target
string
false
Write CLI output to the specified filepath
-f, --output-format
string
false
Set the CLI output format (Default value: <blank>; Allowed values: <blank>, "json")
--disable-colors
false
Disable all CLI output styling (e.g. colors, font styles, etc.)
-y, --yes
false
Automatically proceed through CLI commands by agreeing to any required user prompts
-h, --help
false
help for appservices

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