doctl is a command line interface for the DigitalOcean API.
Usage:
doctl [command]
Available Commands:
account account commands
auth auth commands
completion completion commands
compute compute commands
version show the current version
Flags:
-t, --access-token string API V2 Access Token
-u, --api-url string Override default API V2 endpoint
-c, --config string config file (default is $HOME/.config/doctl/config.yaml)
--context string authentication context name
-h, --help help for doctl
-o, --output string output format [text|json] (default "text")
--trace trace api access
-v, --verbose verbose output
Use "doctl [command] --help" for more information about a command.
doctl
Installing There are four ways to install doctl
: using a package manager, downloading a GitHub release, building a development version from source, or building it with Docker.
Option 1 – Using a Package Manager (Preferred)
A package manager allows you to install and keep up with new doctl
versions using only a few commands. Currently, doctl
is available as part of Homebrew for macOS users and Snap for GNU/Linux users.
You can use Homebrew to install doctl
on macOS with this command:
brew install doctl
You can use Snap on Snap-supported systems to install doctl
with this command:
sudo snap install doctl --classic
Arch Linux
Arch users not using snaps can install from the AUR.
Support for Windows package managers is on the way.
Option 2 — Downloading a Release from GitHub
Visit the Releases page for the doctl
GitHub project, and find the appropriate archive for your operating system and architecture. You can download the archive from from your browser, or copy its URL and retrieve it to your home directory with wget
or curl
.
For example, with wget
:
cd ~
wget https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl/releases/download/v1.15.0/doctl-1.15.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
Or with curl
:
cd ~
curl -OL https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl/releases/download/v1.15.0/doctl-1.15.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
Extract the binary. On GNU/Linux or OS X systems, you can use tar
.
tar xf ~/doctl-1.15.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
Or download and extract with this oneliner:
curl -sL https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl/releases/download/v1.15.0/doctl-1.15.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz | tar -xzv
On Windows systems, you should be able to double-click the zip archive to extract the doctl
executable.
Move the doctl
binary to somewhere in your path. For example, on GNU/Linux and OS X systems:
sudo mv ~/doctl /usr/local/bin
Windows users can follow How to: Add Tool Locations to the PATH Environment Variable in order to add doctl
to their PATH
.
Option 3 — Building the Development Version from Source
If you have a Go environment configured, you can install the development version of doctl
from the command line.
go get -u github.com/digitalocean/doctl/cmd/doctl
While the development version is a good way to take a peek at doctl
's latest features before they get released, be aware that it may have bugs. Officially released versions will generally be more stable.
Option 4 — Building with Docker
If you have Docker configured, you can build a Docker image using doctl
's Dockerfile and run doctl
within a container.
docker build -t doctl .
Then you can run it within a container.
docker run --rm -e DIGITALOCEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN="your_DO_token" doctl any_doctl_command
Authenticating with DigitalOcean
In order to use doctl
, you need to authenticate with DigitalOcean by providing an access token, which can be created from the Applications & API section of the Control Panel. You can learn how to generate a token by following the DigitalOcean API guide.
Docker users will have to use the DIGITALOCEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN
environmental variable to authenticate, as explained in the Installation section of this document.
If you're not using Docker to run doctl
, authenticate with the auth init
command.
doctl auth init
You will be prompted to enter the DigitalOcean access token that you generated in the DigitalOcean control panel.
DigitalOcean access token: your_DO_token
After entering your token, you will receive confirmation that the credentials were accepted. If the token doesn't validate, make sure you copied and pasted it correctly.
Validating token: OK
This will create the necessary directory structure and configuration file to store your credentials.
Logging in to multiple DigitalOcean accounts
doctl
allows you to log in to multiple DigitalOcean accounts at the same time and easily switch between them with the use of authentication contexts.
By default, a context named default
is used. To create a new context, run doctl auth init --context new-context-name
. You may also pass the new context's name using the DIGITALOCEAN_CONTEXT
variable. You will be prompted for your API access token which will be associated with the new context.
To use a non-default context, pass the context name as described above to any doctl
command. To set a new default context, run doctl auth switch
. This command will save the current context to the config file and use it for all commands by default if a context is not specified.
The --access-token
flag or DIGITALOCEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN
variable are acknowledged only if the default
context is used. Otherwise, they will have no effect on what API access token is used. To temporarily override the access token if a different context is set as default, use doctl --context default --access-token your_DO_token ...
.
Configuring Default Values
The doctl
configuration file is used to store your API Access Token as well as the defaults for command flags. If you find yourself using certain flags frequently, you can change their default values to avoid typing them every time. This can be useful when, for example, you want to change the username or port used for SSH.
On OS X and Linux, doctl
's configuration file can be found at ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/doctl/config.yaml
if the ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}
environmental variable is set. Otherwise, the config will be written to ~/.config/doctl/config.yaml
. For Windows users, the config will be available at %LOCALAPPDATA%/doctl/config/config.yaml
.
The configuration file was automatically created and populated with default properties when you authenticated with doctl
for the first time. The typical format for a property is category.command.sub-command.flag: value
. For example, the property for the force
flag with tag deletion is tag.delete.force
.
To change the default SSH user used when connecting to a Droplet with doctl
, look for the compute.ssh.ssh-user
property and change the value after the colon. In this example, we changed it to the username sammy.
. . .
compute.ssh.ssh-user: sammy
. . .
Save and close the file. The next time you use doctl
, the new default values you set will be in effect. In this example, that means that it will SSH as the sammy user (instead of the default root user) next time you log into a Droplet.
Enabling Shell Auto-Completion
doctl
also has auto-completion support. It can be set up so that if you partially type a command and then press TAB
, the rest of the command is automatically filled in. For example, if you type doctl comp<TAB><TAB> drop<TAB><TAB>
with auto-completion enabled, you'll see doctl compute droplet
appear on your command prompt.
Note: Shell auto-completion is not available for Windows users.
How you enable auto-completion depends on which operating system you're using. If you installed doctl
via Homebrew or Snap, auto-completion is activated automatically, though you may need to configure your local environment to enable it.
doctl
can generate an auto-completion script with the doctl completion your_shell_here
command. Valid arguments for the shell are Bash (bash
) and ZSH (zsh
). By default, the script will be printed to the command line output. For more usage examples for the completion
command, use doctl completion --help
.
Linux
The most common way to use the completion
command is by adding a line to your local profile configuration. At the end of your ~/.profile
file, add this line:
source <(doctl completion your_shell_here)
Then refresh your profile.
source ~/.profile
macOS
macOS users will have to install the bash-completion
framework to use the auto-completion feature.
brew install bash-completion
After it's installed, load bash_completion
by adding following line to your .profile
or .bashrc
/.zshrc
file.
source $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion
Examples
doctl
is able to interact with all of your DigitalOcean resources. Below are a few common usage examples. To learn more about the features available, see the full tutorial on the DigitalOcean community site.
- List all Droplets on your account:
doctl compute droplet list
- Create a Droplet:
doctl compute droplet create <name> --region <region-slug> --image <image-slug> --size <size-slug>
- Assign a Floating IP to a Droplet:
doctl compute floating-ip-action assign <ip-addr> <droplet-id>
- Create a new A record for an existing domain:
doctl compute domain records create --record-type A --record-name www --record-data <ip-addr> <domain-name>
doctl
also simplifies actions without an API endpoint. For instance, it allows you to SSH to your Droplet by name:
doctl compute ssh <droplet-name>
By default, it assumes you are using the root
user. If you want to SSH as a specific user, you can do that as well:
doctl compute ssh <user>@<droplet-name>
Building and dependencies
doctl
's dependencies are managed with dep
. To add dependencies, use dep ensure -add github.com/foo/bar