Controlling Ironbar

Ironbar includes a simple IPC server which can be used to control it programmatically at runtime.

It also includes a Command Line Interface, which can be used for interacting with the IPC server. The CLI is auto-generated from the IPC definition, so always includes all commands.

CLI

This is shipped as part of the ironbar binary. To view commands, you can use ironbar --help. You can also view help per sub-command or command, for example using ironbar var --help or ironbar var set --help.

The CLI supports plaintext and JSON output. Plaintext will:

• Print ok for empty success responses
• Print the returned body for each success response
  • Some commands act on multiple objects, in which case the CLI will print one line for each body.
• Print error to followed by the error on the next line for error responses. This is printed to stderr.

Example:

$ ironbar var set subject world
ok

$ ironbar var get subject
world

$ ironbar var get foo
error
Variable not found

All error responses will cause the CLI to exit code 3.