# 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:

```json
{

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

}
```

while your local file `local.json` contains:
```json
{
    "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:
```json
{
    "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": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
        "public": "nJq6EmdUkvFjQRB5hFvDmvZtv1deb3W3RgmiAq6dyygC"
    },
    "keyring": [
        "pubkey0",
        "pubkey1"
    ],
    "server": {
        "bind": "0.0.0.0:9984",
        "threads": null,
        "workers": null
    },
    "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
```