Getting started with the Cloud Foundry and Bluemix Command Line Utilities

In order to fully utilize the power of your Bluemix account it is recommended to install the Cloud Foundry and Bluemix command line clients. This guide will walk you through that process as well as some of the basic command line options.

Installing Cloud Foundry Command Line Client

Please see our Knowledgelayer Guide on how to install the Cloud Foundry CLI.

Once installed you will use the cf command when interacting with Cloud Foundry applications and your Bluemix account.

Basic cf commands

cf api Set the API endpoint. The cf api command allows you to set the region that you will be interacting with from the command line.

$ cf api https://api.{DomainName}

cf login The cf login command logs you in to the specific account, API endpoint, space and organization that you specify. If you simply invoke cf login you will be prompted to fill out the information, otherwise you can use the following command to log in to the specific Org and Space where your apps and services reside.

$ cf login [-a API_ENDPOINT] [-u USERNAME] [-p PASSWORD] [-o ORG] [-s SPACE]

cf marketplace Lists all of the services that are available in the marketplace. The services listed by this command are also shown in the Bluemix Catalog.

cf push The push command is used to deploy a new application to Bluemix, or update an existing application if you have made local changes to the configuration. The push command uses the applications manifest.yml file to determine how the application is deployed if no command line options are specified.

$ cf push APP_NAME

# Specify the applications configuration when pushing the app
$ cf push APP_NAME [-b BUILDPACK_NAME] [-d DOMAIN] [-f MANIFEST_PATH] [-i NUM_INSTANCES] [-k DISK] [-m MEMORY]

cf scale Displays or changes the instance number, disk space limit, and memory limit for an application.

$ cf scale APP_NAME [-i NUM_INSTANCES] [-k DISK] [-m MEMORY]

cf set-env Sets an environment variable for an application. These can also be specified in the applications manifest.yml file.

$ cf set-env APP_NAME

cf help Displays help information for all cf commands, or for a specific cf command if the command_name parameter is used.

$ cf help (will display all options)  
$ cf help command_name (will display the help section of a specific command)

Interacting with Bluemix containers using cf

You can use the Cloud Foundry command line to interact with IBM Containers by installing the ic container plugin using the following guide. Once installed you can use the command cf ic to interact with your IBM containers instead of the docker command.

cf ic [COMMAND]

# For examaple, to build a container from a Dockerfile and push it to Bluemix you would use `cf ic build` in place of `docker build`
$ cf ic build -t NAME_OF_CONTAINER . 

See here for the full rundown on supported docker commands when using the ic plugin.

Installing the Bluemix Command Line client

Please see our Knowledgelayer Guide on how to install the Bluemix CLI.

Basic bluemix commands

Except for the OpenStack CLI tool that is used for Virtual Servers management, the Cloud Foundry cf command line tool is a prerequisite for all other Bluemix CLI tools. The Bluemix CLI provides an extended experience to manage your Bluemix environment above and beyond the management of Cloud Foundry applications. The CLI can be invoked using the command bluemix or bx.

bx api As with cf, the bx api command allows you to set the region that you will be interacting with from the command line.

$ bx api https://api.{DomainName}

bx login The bx login command logs you in to the specific account, API endpoint, space and organization that you specify. If you simply invoke bx login you will be prompted to fill out the information, otherwise you can use the following command to log in to the specific Org and Space where your apps and services reside.

$ bx login [-a API_ENDPOINT] [-u USERNAME] [-p PASSWORD] [-o ORG] [-s SPACE]

bx list List all Cloud Foundry applications, services, containers, and virtual servers in the targeted organization and space.

bx iam Allows for the creation and management of organizations, spaces and users on a Bluemix Account.

$ bx iam

To create a new organization for example, issue the command bx iam org-create NEW_ORG_NAME

$ bx iam org-create MyNewBluemixTestingOrg
Creating org MyNewBluemixTestingOrg as ryan@tinylab.info...
OK

TIP: Use 'bx target -o MyNewBluemixTestingOrg' to target new org

bx service List, create, update, delete, and bind Bluemix Services. You can also use the command bx offerings to list all of the available service offerings in the marketplace.

# Create a new Auto-Scale service using the free tier.
$ bx service create Auto-Scaling free MyNewAutoScaleService

# Bind our new Auto-Scaling service to an existing application.
$ bx service bind MyGreatApp MyNewAutoScaleService

bx cf Run the Cloud Foundry CLI with Bluemix context. This is used when a Bluemix CLI sub-command is needed to replicate a cf sub-command that is not natively built in to the bx command.

More information

Bluemix cf Quick Reference Card