Something wrong with the translation?

Help us to improve it on our translation platform

Funkwhale CLI

Funkwhale CLI is a command-line interface you can install on your local computer to interact with any Funkwhale server via the REST API. It’s especially useful if you need to do repetitive operations or write scripts that interact with Funkwhale servers.

Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of operations you can perform via the CLI:

  • Manage libraries

  • Upload local files

  • Retrieve and search tracks, albums and artists

  • Download tracks

  • Manage playlists

  • Manage favorites

Installation

We provide a prebuilt binary for Linux:

curl -L "https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/cli/-/jobs/artifacts/stable/raw/funkwhale?job=build-linux" -o /usr/local/bin/funkwhale
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/funkwhale

You can also install from source with:

pip3 install --user git+https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/cli
# the executable will be available at ~/.local/bin/funkwhale

Note

Installing from source requires you have Python 3.6 or higher available.

You can check the installation was successful by running funkwhale --help. This should output the list of available commands and the CLI description.

Basic usage

Here are a couple of commands you can try to get started:

# Display public server info of demo.funkwhale.audio
funkwhale -H https://demo.funkwhale.audio server info

# List tracks from open.audio
funkwhale -H https://open.audio tracks ls

# Search artists matching "zebra" on open.audio
funkwhale -H https://open.audio artists ls "zebra"

Getting help

The most basic way to get help is to run funkwhale --help. It will list available commands, namespaces and arguments that are common to all commands.

You can also append the --help flag after any command to get more information about its arguments and options, like this: funkwhale albums ls --help

The CLI offers nested commands. For instance, funkwhale albums isn’t a valid command in itself, but a namespace for all albums-related commands.

To get the help of a specific namespace and list all its available commands, simply run funkwhale <namespace> --help.

Authentication

The CLI uses Oauth tokens to interact with the API.

To get started, you need to create an application for the CLI. To do this:

  1. Log in to your Funkwhale pod.

  2. Select the cog icon () or your avatar to expand the user menu.

  3. Select Settings.

  4. Scroll down to the Your applications section.

  5. Select Register a new application to create a new application.

  6. Give your application an appropriate name (e.g. “Funkwhale CLI”).

  7. Give your application the permissions you require.

  8. Select Create application. A screen appears showing Application details.

  9. Copy the app’s Access token.

Once you have your app’s Access Token, you can either:

  1. Run funkwhale login. The CLI asks you for your token and stores it in your machine’s keyring. The CLI uses this token to authenticate.

  2. Explicitly pass a token to the command via the -t flag or the FUNKWHALE_TOKEN environment variable

If you use funkwhale login, you can delete the local token with funkwhale logout.

You can check that you are fully authenticated by running funkwhale users me. It will display information relating to your user profile.

Configuration

To work, the CLI needs to be pointed to a Funkwhale server. This can be done in various ways:

  • Via the -H https://funkwhale.domain flag when calling the CLI

  • Via the FUNKWHALE_SERVER_URL environment variable

  • Via an env file (see below)

Env file

The CLI will try to read configuration options from a .env file in the current directory. If this file is not present, it will read the configuration options from ~/.config/funkwhale/env on Linux or ~/Library/Application Support/funkwhale/env on macOS.

You can also give it a path to another env file via the -e /path/to/.envfile flag or the ENV_FILE environment variable.

An env file simply contains a list of variables, using the same syntax as environment variables (comments starting with # are allowed). Example:

# ~/Music/.env
FUNKWHALE_SERVER_URL=https://my.funkwhale.server

List of configuration options

CLI Flag

Environment variable

Example value

Description

-e, --env-file

ENV_FILE

~/Music/.env

Path to a local env file to use for configuration

-H, --url

FUNKWHALE_SERVER_URL

https://demo.funkwhale.audio

The URL of the Funkwhale server the CLI should contact

-t, --token

FUNKWHALE_TOKEN

eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI

A JWT token to use for authentication

--no-login

FUNKWHALE_NO_LOGIN

true

Completely disable authentication and keyring

-v, --verbosity

One of CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, INFO or DEBUG

Control the verbosity (default is INFO)

-q, --quiet

FUNKWHALE_QUIET

true

Completely disable logging

Read commands

All commands that list results - such as funkwhale albums ls or funkwhale tracks ls - share similar behaviors and sets of arguments.

Filtering

Results can be filtered using the -f or --filter flag. Provided values are transmitted directly in the querystring when the requests to the API is made:

# retrieve playable tracks
funkwhale tracks ls -f "playable=true"

The flag can be provided multiple times, to add multiple filter conditions:

# retrieve playable tracks with a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license
funkwhale tracks ls -f "playable=true" -f "license=cc-by-sa-4.0"

Note

The list of supported fields for filtering depends on the resource being queried, and can be found in our API documentation.

Searching

Any text provided after the ls command will be considered a search query and transmitted to the API:

# retrieve tracks matching the search query "Electro Swing"
funkwhale tracks ls Electro Swing

Note

This is technically equivalent to filtering with a q parameter as described above:

funkwhale tracks ls -f "q=Electro Swing"

Ordering

You can control the ordering of the results with the -o or --ordering flag:

# retrieve albums by creation date, in ascending order
funkwhale albums ls -o creation_date

Note

Ordering in descending order is supported by prefixing the field name with -, e.g: -o -creation_date

Note

The list of supported fields for ordering depends on the resource being queried, and can be found in our API documentation.

Pagination

You can retrieve a specific result page using the -p or --page flag:

# retrieve the second page of albums
funkwhale albums ls -p 2

You can also alter the size of the pages using the -s or --page-size flag:

# retrieve five albums
funkwhale albums ls -s 5

Sometimes, you may want to retrieve multiple pages of results at once. This is supported using the -l or --limit flag:

# retrieve the first 3 pages of albums
funkwhale albums ls -l 3

You can, of course, combine these flags:

# retrieve 3 pages of 12 albums, starting on the 4th page
funkwhale albums ls --limit 3 --page-size 12 --page 4

Output

While the default output displays a human-readable table, you can customize it.

The --raw flag will simply output the raw JSON payload returned by the API server:

funkwhale artists ls --raw

The -h or --no-headers flag simply removes the table column headers.

The -t or --format flag alters the rendering of result, depending on the provided value:

# list artists outputting a html table
funkwhale artists ls -t html
# output a github/markdown table
funkwhale artists ls -t github

Available formats are: fancy_grid, github, grid, html, jira, latex, latex_booktabs, latex_raw, mediawiki, moinmoin, orgtbl, pipe, plain, presto, psql, rst, simple, textile, tsv, youtrack

The -c or --column flag gives you control on the displayed columns:

# list artists, displaying only artist ID and number of tracks
funkwhale artists ls -c ID -c Tracks

For a given resource, the list of available columns can be found by running funkwhale <resource> ls --help.

The -i or --ids flag displays only the IDs of results, one per line:

funkwhale artists ls --ids

This is especially useful in conjunction with other commands (like deletion commands) and piping. Note that this is also technically equivalent to applying the --no-headers, --format plain and --column ID flags.

Write commands

Deleting objects

Some resources support deletion, via commands such as funkwhale libraries rm or funkwhale playlists rm, followed by one or more IDs:

# delete playlists 42 and 23
funkwhale playlists rm 42 23

By default, the rm command will ask for confirmation, but you can disable this behavior by providing the --no-input flag.

Examples

Uploading local files

Goal: create a library and upload all MP3 files from ~/Music to it

Commands:

funkwhale libraries create --name "My awesome library" --visibility me
# copy the returned UUID
funkwhale uploads create <UUID> ~/Music/**/*.mp3

Favorite an entire album

Goal: retrieve all the tracks from an album and add these to your favorites

Commands:

# retrieve the album ID
funkwhale albums ls "The Slip"

# Copy the ID, then retrieve 100 pages of tracks from that album
# get only the IDs and pipe those to the favorite creation command
funkwhale tracks ls -f "album=<ID>" --ids --limit 100 \
    | xargs funkwhale favorites tracks create

Mirror an artist discography locally

Goal: Download the discography of an artist locally, in the ~/Music directory, in an Artist/Album/Track folder hierarchy

Commands:

# retrieve the artist ID
funkwhale artists ls "Nine Inch Nails"

# Copy the ID, then retrieve 100 pages of tracks from that artist
# get only the IDs and pipe those to the download command
funkwhale tracks ls -f "artist=<ID>" --ids --limit 100 \
    | xargs funkwhale tracks download \
        -f mp3 -d ~/Music -t "{artist}/{album}/{title}.{extension}"

Open a remote album in VLC

Goal: Variation of the previous example, but instead of downloading an artist discography, we listen to an album in VLC

Commands:

# retrieve the album ID
funkwhale albums ls "The Slip"

# Copy the ID, then retrieve 100 pages of tracks from that album
# get only the IDs, download the corresponding tracks and pipe the audio
# directly to VLC
funkwhale tracks ls -f "album=<ID>" --ids --limit 100 \
    | xargs funkwhale tracks download \
    | vlc -