# The BigchainDB Command Line Interfaces (CLIs)

BigchainDB has some Command Line Interfaces (CLIs). One of them is the `bigchaindb` command which we already saw when we first started BigchainDB using:
```text
$ bigchaindb configure
$ bigchaindb start
```

When you run `bigchaindb configure`, it creates a default configuration file in `$HOME/.bigchaindb`. You can check that configuration using:
```text
$ bigchaindb show-config
```

To find out what else you can do with the `bigchain` command, use:
```text
$ bigchaindb -h
```

There's another command named `bigchaindb-benchmark`. It's used to run benchmarking tests. You can learn more about it using:
```text
$ bigchaindb-benchmark -h
$ bigchaindb-benchmark load -h
```

Note that you can always start `bigchaindb` using a different config file using the `-c` option.
For more information check the help with `bigchaindb -h`.


# Precedence in reading configuration values

Note that there is a precedence in reading configuration values:
 - local config file;
 - environment vars;
 - default config file (contained in ``bigchaindb.__init__``).

This means that if the default configuration contains an entry that is:

```
{...
    "database": {"host": "localhost",
                 "port": 28015}
...}
```

while your local file `local.json` contains:
```
{...
    "database": {"host": "ec2-xx-xx-xxx-xxx.eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com"}
...}
```

and you run this command:
```
$ BIGCHAINDB_DATABASE_HOST=anotherhost.com \
  BIGCHAINDB_DATABASE_PORT=4242 \
  BIGCHAINDB_KEYRING=pubkey0:pubkey1 \
  bigchaindb -c local.json show-config
```

you will get:
```
Cannot find config file `/home/vrde/.bigchaindb`.
INFO:bigchaindb.config_utils:Configuration loaded from `local.json`
{'CONFIGURED': True,
 'api_endpoint': 'http://localhost:8008/api/v1',
 'consensus_plugin': 'default',
 'database': {'host': 'ec2-xx-xx-xxx-xxx.eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com',
              'name': 'bigchain',
              'port': 4242},
 'keypair': {'private': None, 'public': None},
 'keyring': ['pubkey0', 'pubkey1'],
 'statsd': {'host': 'localhost', 'port': 8125, 'rate': 0.01}}
```

Note that the type of `keyring` is a list. If you want to pass a list as an
environ variable you need to use colon (`:`) as separator.


# List of env variables

```
- BIGCHAINDB_DATABASE_HOST
- BIGCHAINDB_DATABASE_PORT
- BIGCHAINDB_DATABASE_NAME
- BIGCHAINDB_KEYPAIR_PUBLIC
- BIGCHAINDB_KEYPAIR_PRIVATE
- BIGCHAINDB_KEYRING
- BIGCHAINDB_STATSD_HOST
- BIGCHAINDB_STATSD_PORT
- BIGCHAINDB_STATSD_RATE
- BIGCHAINDB_API_ENDPOINT
- BIGCHAINDB_CONSENSUS_PLUGIN
- BIGCHAINDB_SERVER_BIND
- BIGCHAINDB_SERVER_WORKERS
- BIGCHAINDB_SERVER_THREADS
```