bluectl

In today's post, I will introduce bluectl, the official command line interface (CLI) for Alphaus services. To those who prefer CLIs (that includes me), we provide bluectl for interacting with our services. It uses the same API that powers our Ripple/Wave[Pro]/Aqua UI consoles.

Installation

You can install bluectl using Homebrew (MacOS, Linux, and Windows through WSL/2). Run the command below in a terminal:

$ brew install alphauslabs/tap/bluectl

Authentication

bluectl uses API client credentials for authentication. You can generate your API credentials either from Ripple under "Tools > API Access Tokens", or Wave[Pro] under "Settings > API Access Tokens".

To validate your credentials with bluectl, run the command below (replace the {client-*} part with your actual client id and client secret values):

$ bluectl whoami --client-id {client-id} --client-secret {client-secret}

If successful, it will output some information about the authenticated user.

Environment variables

You can also store your credentials as environment variables instead of typing them everytime you run a command. Check out the "Environment setup" section here.

With environment variables set, you should now be able to run any bluectl commands without the --client-id and --client-secret flags.

$ bluectl whoami

Configuration file

bluectl also supports authentication using a configuration file located in $HOME/.config/alphaus/config.toml.

[default]
client-id = 'sample-id'
client-secret = 'sample-secret'

[beta]
client-id = 'sample-id'
client-secret = 'sample-secret'
auth-url = 'https://loginnext.alphaus.cloud/ripple/access_token'

You can select a profile using the --profile flag. For example:

$ bluectl whoami --profile beta

If the configuration file exists and the [default] profile is set, bluectl will use that credentials. In this case, the --profile default flag can be omitted. If both environment variables and the [default] profile are present, bluectl will use the [default] profile.

# This usage...
$ bluectl whoami --profile default

# is the same as...
$ bluectl whoami

Usage

Finally, you can explore some of bluectl's available supported commands by running:

# Check out the main commands:
$ bluectl -h

# More information on a specific subcommand:
$ bluectl {subcommand} -h

We also have several guides that use bluectl as the main tool. You can check the links below for more information.

Registering AWS payer accounts using bluectl
Querying AWS costs using bluectl
Adding cost modifiers to the AWS calculator using bluectl

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