Getting started with the cf CLI

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The Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface (cf CLI) is the official command line client for Cloud Foundry. You can use the cf CLI to manage apps, service instances, orgs, spaces, and users in your environment.

Prerequisite

To follow the procedures in this topic, you must download and install the latest version of the cf CLI v7 or v8. For more information, see Installing the Cloud Foundry command line interface.

Log in with the CLI

The cf login command uses the syntax described below to specify a target API endpoint, login credentials, an org, and a space.

The cf CLI prompts for credentials as needed. If you are a member of multiple orgs or spaces, cf login prompts you to specify the org or space to which you want to log in. Otherwise, it targets your org and space automatically.

To log in to the cf CLI:

  1. In a terminal window, run:

    cf login -a API-URL -u USERNAME -p PASSWORD -o ORG -s SPACE

    Where:

    • API-URL is your API endpoint, the URL of the Cloud Controller in your App Cloud instance.
    • USERNAME is your username.
    • PASSWORD is your password. Cloud Foundry discourages using the -p option, because it records your password in your shell history.
    • ORG is the org where you want to deploy your apps.
    • SPACE is the space in the org where you want to deploy your apps.

When you successfully log in, you see output similar to the following example:

API endpoint: https://api.example.com

Password>
Authenticating...
OK

Targeted org example-org

Targeted space development


API endpoint:   https://api.example.com
User:           username@example.com
Org:            example-org
Space:          development

Alternatively, you can write a script to log in and set your target using the non-interactive cf api, cf auth, and cf target commands. See UAAC for setting up client_id and client_secret.

Log in with the API

You can write a script to log in to the cf CLI. This allows you to avoid manually logging in to the cf CLI each time you use it.

To write a script to log in:

  1. In a terminal window, target your API by running:

    cf api API-URL

    Where API-URL is your API endpoint, the URL of the Cloud Controller in your App Cloud instance.

    For more information about the cf api command, use cf api --help.

  2. Authenticate by running:

    cf auth USERNAME PASSWORD

    Where:

    • USERNAME is your username.
    • PASSWORD is your password. Cloud Foundry discourages using the -p option, because it records your password in your shell history.

    For more information about the cf auth command, use cf auth --help.

  3. Target your org or space by running:

    cf target -o ORG -s SPACE

    Where:

    • ORG is the org you want to target.
    • SPACE is the space you want to target.

    For more information about the cf target command, use cf target --help.

After you log in, the cf CLI saves a config.json file that contains your API endpoint, org, space values, and access token. If you change these settings, the config.json file is updated accordingly.

By default, config.json is located in the ~/.cf directory. You can relocate the config.json file using the CF_HOME environment variable.

Localize the cf CLI (v6 only)

The cf CLI translates terminal output into the language that you select. The default language is en-US.

The cf CLI supports these languages:

  • Chinese (simplified): zh-Hans
  • Chinese (traditional): zh-Hant
  • English: en-US
  • French: fr-FR
  • German: de-DE
  • Italian: it-IT
  • Japanese: ja-JP
  • Korean: ko-KR
  • Portuguese (Brazil): pt-BR
  • Spanish: es-ES

For more information about the cf config --locale command, use cf config --help.

Localizing the cf CLI affects only messages that the cf CLI generates.

To set the language of the cf CLI:

  1. In a terminal window, log in to the cf CLI:

    cf login

  2. Run:

    cf config --locale LANGUAGE

    Where LANGUAGE is code of the language you want to set. Valid values are zh-Hans, zh-Hant, en-US, fr-FR, de-DE, it-IT, ja-JP, ko-KR, pt-BR, and es-ES.

  3. Confirm the language change by running:

    cf help

    The above command returns output similar to the example below: 

    NOME:
   cf - Uma ferramenta de linha de comando para interagir com Cloud Foundry
    


    USO:
   cf [opções globais] comando [argumentos...] [opções de comando]
    


    VERSÃO:
   6.14.1
   ...

Manage users and roles

The cf CLI includes commands that list users and assign roles in orgs and spaces.

List users

To list all users in an org or a space:

  1. In a terminal window, log in to the cf CLI:

    cf login

  2. Run one of these commands:

    • To list org users, run:

      cf org-users ORG

      Where ORG is the name of the org for which you want to see the list of users.

      The above command returns output similar to the example below: 

      Getting users in org example-org as username@example.com...
      


      ORG MANAGER
  username@example.com
      


      BILLING MANAGER
  huey@example.com
  dewey@example.com
      


      ORG AUDITOR
  louie@example.com

    • To list space users, run:

      cf space-users ORG SPACE

      Where:

      • ORG is the name of the org that contains the space for which you want to see the list of users.
      • SPACE is the name of the space for which you want to see the list of users.

      The above command returns output similar to the example below: 

      Getting users in org example-org / space example-space as username@example.com...
      


      SPACE MANAGER
  username@example.com
      


      SPACE DEVELOPER
  huey@example.com
  dewey@example.com
      


      SPACE AUDITOR
  louie@example.com

For more information about the cf org-users command, use cf org-users --help. For more information about the cf space-users command, use cf space-users --help.

Manage roles

You use the commands listed below to manage roles in the cf CLI. These commands require admin permissions and take username, org or space, and role as arguments:

  • cf set-org-role
    For more information, use cf set-org-role --help.

  • cf unset-org-role
    For more information, use cf unset-org-role --help.

  • cf set-space-role
    For more information, use cf set-space-role --help.

  • cf unset-space-role
    For more information, use cf unset-space-role --help.

The available roles are:

  • OrgManager
  • BillingManager
  • OrgAuditor
  • SpaceManager
  • SpaceDeveloper
  • SpaceAuditor

For more information about user roles, see Orgs, Spaces, Roles, and Permissions.

The following example shows the terminal output for cf set-org-role huey@example.com example-org OrgManager, which assigns the Org Manager role to huey@example.com within the example-org org:

Assigning role OrgManager to user huey@example.com in org example-org as username@example.com...
OK

If you are not an admin, you see this message when you try to run these commands: error code: 10003, message: You are not authorized to perform the requested action

Manage roles for users with identical usernames in multiple origins

If a username corresponds to multiple accounts from different user stores, such as both the internal UAA store and an external SAML or LDAP store, running either cf set-org-role or cf unset-org-role returns an error similar to the following example:

The user exists in multiple origins. Specify an origin for the requested user from: ‘uaa’, ‘other’

To resolve this ambiguity, you can construct a curl command that uses the API to perform the desired role management function. For an example, see the Cloud Foundry API documentation.

Push an app

These sections describe how to use the cf push command to push a new app or sync changes to an existing app.

For more information about the cf push command, use cf push --help.

Push a new app or push changes to an app

To push an app:

  1. In a terminal window, log in to the cf CLI by running:

    cf login

  2. Go to the directory of the app.

  3. Push a new app or push changes to an app by running:

    cf push APP-NAME

    Where APP-NAME is the name of the app.

Push an app using a manifest

You can provide a path to a manifest file when you push an app. The manifest file includes information such as the name of the app, disk limit, and number of instances. You can use a manifest file rather than adding flags to the cf push command.

cf push locates the manifest.yml file in the current working directory by default. Alternatively, you can provide a path to the manifest with the -f flag.

For more information about the -f flag, see the cf push --help output.

When you provide an app name at the command line, the cf push command uses that app name instead of any app name provided in the manifest. If the manifest configures multiple apps, you can push a single app by providing thenname at the command line; the cf CLI does not push the others. Use these behaviors for testing.

Push an app with a buildpack

You can specify a buildpack when you push an app with the -b flag. If you use the -b flag to specify a buildpack, the app remains permanently linked to that buildpack. To use the app with a different buildpack, you must delete the app and then push it again.

For more information about available buildpacks, see the Cloud Foundry documentation.

The following example shows the terminal output for cf push awesome-app -b ruby_buildpack, which pushes an app called awesome-app to the URL http://awesome-app.example.com and specifies the Ruby buildpack with the -b flag:

Pushing app awesome-app to org example-org / space development as username@example.com...

...

Waiting for app awesome-app to start...


name:              awesome-app
requested state:   started
routes:            awesome-app.example.com
last uploaded:     Wed 17 Jul 22:57:04 UTC 2024
stack:             cflinuxfs3
buildpacks:
    name             version   detect output   buildpack name
    ruby_buildpack   1.8.58    ruby            ruby

type:            web
sidecars:
instances:       1/1
memory usage:    1024M
start command:   bundle exec rackup config.ru -p $PORT -o 0.0.0.0
     state     since                  cpu    memory        disk           logging         cpu entitlement   details
#0   running   2024-07-17T22:57:22Z   0.3%   49.5M of 1G   130.2M of 1G   0B/s of 16K/s   2.4%

To avoid security exposure, verify that you migrate your apps and custom buildpacks to use the cflinuxfs4 stack based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish). The cflinuxfs3 stack is based on Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver), which reaches end of standard support in April 2023.

Map a route to an app

You can provide a hostname for your app when you push the app. If you do not provide a hostname, the cf push command routes your app to a URL of the form APP-NAME.DOMAIN, where APP-NAME is the name of your app and DOMAIN is the default domain configured in the Cloud Foundry environment. The route definition is included in the manifest.yml file.

For information about mapping a route to your app, see Routes and domains.

To map a route to the app:

  1. In a terminal window, log in to the cf CLI by running:

    cf login

  2. Push and map a route by running:

    cf push -f manifest.yml --var host=APP-HOSTNAME

    Where:

    • APP-NAME is the name of the app.
    • APP-DOMAIN is the domain of the app.
    • APP-HOSTNAME is the hostname of the app.

Manage user-provided service instances

These sections describe how to create or update a service instance.

Create a service instance

To create a new service instance, use the cf create-user-provided-service or cf cups commands. For more information about the cf create-user-provided-service and cf cups commands, use cf create-user-provided-service --help.

To create or update a user-provided service instance, you must supply basic parameters. For example, a database service might require a username, password, host, port, and database name.

You can provide these parameters in the following ways:

When used with third-party logging, data is sent formatted according to RFC 5424. For more information, see RFC 5424.

Supply parameters interactively

To create a new service while supplying parameters interactively:

  1. In a terminal window, log in to the cf CLI by running:

    cf login

  2. List parameters in a comma-separated list after the -p flag. Run:

    cf cups SERVICE -p "PARAMETER, SECOND-PARAMETER, THIRD-PARAMETER"

    Where:

    • SERVICE is the name of the service you want to create.
    • PARAMETER, SECOND-PARAMETER, and THIRD-PARAMETER are parameters such as username, password, host, port, and database name.

Supply parameters non-interactively

To create a new service while supplying parameters non-interactively:

  1. In a terminal window, log in to the cf CLI by running:

    cf login

  2. Pass parameters and their values in as a JSON hash, bound by single quotes, after the -p tag. Run:

    cf cups SERVICE -p '{"host":"HOSTNAME", "port":"PORT"}'

    Where:

    • SERVICE is the name of the service you want to create.
    • HOSTNAME and PORT are service parameters.

Supply parameters through a third party

For specific log service instructions, see Streaming app logs to third-party services.

To create a service instance that sends data to a third party:

  1. Log in to the cf CLI:

    cf login

  2. Create a service instance that sends data to a third party by running:

    cf cups SERVICE -l THIRD-PARTY-DESTINATION-URL

    Where:

    • SERVICE is the name of the service you want to create.
    • THIRD-PARTY-DESTINATION-URL is the external URL of the third-party service.

Bind and unbind service instances

After you create a user-provided service instance, you can:

  • Bind the service to an app with cf bind-service. For more information, use cf bind-service --help.

  • Unbind the service with cf unbind-service. For more information, use cf unbind-service --help.

  • Rename the service with cf rename-service. For more information, use cf rename-service --help.

  • Delete the service with cf delete-service. For more information, use cf delete-service --help.

Update a service instance

To update one or more of the parameters for an existing user-provided service instance, use cf update-user-provided-service or cf uups.

For more information about the cf update-user-provided-service and cf uups commands, use cf create-user-provided-service --help.

The cf uups command does not update any parameter values that you do not supply.

Retrieve cf CLI return codes

The cf CLI uses exit codes, which help with scripting and confirming that a command has run successfully.

To view a cf CLI exit code:

  1. In a terminal window, log in to the cf CLI by running:

    cf login

  2. To check that the login was successful, run one of these commands, depending on your OS:

    • For macOS, run:

      echo $?

    • For Windows, run:

      echo %ERRORLEVEL%

If the command succeeds, the exit code is 0.

View CLI help output

The cf help command lists the cf CLI commands and a brief description of each..

To list detailed help for any cf CLI command, add the --help or -h flag to the command.

The example below shows detailed help output for the cf delete command:

NAME:
   delete - Delete an app

USAGE:
   cf delete APP_NAME [-f -r]

ALIAS:
   d

OPTIONS:
   -f       Force deletion without confirmation
   -r       Delete any mapped routes (only deletes routes mapped to a single app)
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