Best approach to work with different environments using Atlassian Command Line Interface (CLI)

This article explains the steps to update the acli.properties file to work with different environments using Atlassian Command Line Interface (CLI).

If you want to use CLI to work with multiple environments, the acli.properties file needs to be updated with the details of the environment(s).

A new feature with CLI version 9.0 provides the required configuration in the form of a standard property file. This is an alternative for defining unique start scripts or customizing the Atlassian start script with credentials and URLs. This CLI distribution folder contains properties files for both Cloud and Server.

Instructions

Go to the CLI installation directory.
Rename the example properties file (acli-cloud or acli-server) to acli.properties appropriately as per your environment.

Update the acli.properties file, as shown below:

To work with multiple Cloud sites and/or Server sites, you need to update the acli.properties file as shown in the below example where different environments like Prod,Stage, QA etc., are targeted:

Example: acli.properties

# Example Cloud configuration - customize and rename this file to acli.properties
 
# Cloud requires an email address and a corresponding API token from Atlassian.
# Use an existing token or create one at https://id.atlassian.com/manage/api-tokens (requires an Atlassian account login).

cloudcredentials  = --user automation@example.com --token xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
myjira            = jiracloud       -s https://issues.example.com      ${cloudcredentials} 
myconfluence      = confluencecloud -s https://mydocs.example.com      ${cloudcredentials} 


# Example Server configuration:

prodservercredentials = --user admin --password admin
jiraserver            = jira       -s https://prodjira.examplegear.com       ${prodservercredentials}
confluenceserver      = confluence -s https://prodconfluence.examplegear.com ${prodservercredentials}


qacredentials     = --user qauser --password qapass
qajira            = jira       -s https://qajira.example.com       ${qacredentials}
qaconfluence      = confluence -s https://qaconfluence.example.com ${qacredentials}

 
# This defines the default client for actions, choose the most likely used client
default           = ${myjira}

Save the file and run the below commands as per your requirement:

acli qajira --action getServerInfo
acli myconfluence --action addPage --space "demo"  --title "This is title"  --parent "@home"
acli myjira --action cloneIssue  --issue "JIRACLI-4"  --summary "clone summary"  --comment "comment for cloned issue"

You can also use -a instead of --action for all CLI actions. For example:

acli -a getServerInfo

Each instance can be given a unique name, which will point to the respective Atlassian instance. You can use this name, when you want to execute the cli commands against the respective instance.
In the above properties file, myjira is a name pointing to your Jira cloud instance and myconfluence is the name pointing to your Confluence cloud instance. Similarly the other names are pointing to other respective instances.
The credentials will have the username and password/token for the respective instance. Please provide your userid in user parameter and API token data in token parameter as shown below:
credentials = --user automation@example.com --token xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx