SPIKE Command Line Interface

SPIKE in Action

To watch SPIKE CLI in action, you can check out SPIKE presentations and demo recordings.

SPIKE uses SPIKE Pilot (the command line tool) to interact with SPIKE Nexus (the secrets store).

Detailed CLI Documentation

The rest of this page focuses on providing a practical sense of how to use the SPIKE command line interface. It’s aimed at explaining its usage through examples and common scenarios. Please note that it is not a normative or exhaustive reference; for that, refer to the SPIKE CLI Reference.

How to Get Help

The best way to learn about it will be to use its --help flag.

Here is how the interface looks like. Note that what you see might be different based on the version you use.

spike (main)$ spike
>> Secure your secrets with SPIFFE: https://spike.ist/ #

Usage:
  spike [command]

Available Commands:
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  help        Help about any command
  operator    Manage admin operations
  policy      Manage policies
  secret      Manage secrets

Flags:
  -h, --help   help for spike

Use "spike [command] --help" for more information about a command.

And here is how we can get help about a certain using the --help flag:

spike (main)$ spike secret --help
Manage secrets

Usage:
  spike secret [command]

Available Commands:
  delete      Delete secrets at the specified path
  get         Get secrets from the specified path
  list        List all secret paths
  metadata    Manage secret metadata
  put         Put secrets at the specified path
  undelete    Undelete secrets at the specified path

Flags:
  -h, --help   help for secret

Use "spike secret [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Let’s dig in further:

spike (main)$ spike secret put --help
Put secrets at the specified path

Usage:
  spike secret put <path> <key=value>... [flags]

Flags:
  -h, --help   help for put

Okay, that explains a lot. Let’s try the command:

spike (main)$ spike secret put /tenants/acme/db/creds pass=SPIKERocks
OK

Now let’s try to read this secret:

spike (main)$ spike secret get --help
Get secrets from the specified path

Usage:
  spike secret get <path> [flags]

Flags:
  -h, --help          help for get
  -v, --version int   Specific version to retrieve

Now that we know how to use the spike secret get command, let’s try it.

spike (main)$ spike secret get /tenants/acme/db/creds
pass: SPIKERocks

That’s about it. You can use other SPIKE commands similarly.