consul-kv

Read a value from the key-value store

$ consul kv get [key]

$ consul kv put [key] [value]

$ consul kv delete [key]

consul-kv operation key [value] [options]

operation
    Specifies the action to perform on the KV store. Common operations typically include:
get: Retrieve the value associated with a given key.
put: Store or update a value for a specific key.
delete: Remove a key and its associated value.
ls (or list): List keys under a given prefix, often recursively.

key
    The full path of the key in the Consul KV store (e.g., 'my-service/config/db-url').

[value]
    Optional. The value to be stored for the specified key. This parameter is typically required for 'put' operations.

[options]
    Optional. Any additional flags or arguments supported by the specific consul-kv wrapper script. These might include flags for specifying the Consul agent address, a Consul ACL token, data encoding (e.g., base64), or recursion depth for list operations.

The command consul-kv is typically not a standalone binary distributed with Consul itself, but rather a common pattern for a shell script wrapper designed to simplify interactions with the Consul Key-Value (KV) store. It abstracts the more verbose official consul kv subcommands (like consul kv get, consul kv put, consul kv delete, etc.) into a more concise and user-friendly interface.

While its exact implementation can vary widely depending on who created the script, its primary purpose is to provide quick and easy access to common KV operations such as retrieving values, storing new data, or deleting existing entries. Users often create or adopt such scripts to streamline automation tasks or manual data management within their Consul deployments, avoiding the need to remember the full syntax of the native consul kv commands.

The consul-kv command is not a standard, officially distributed binary by HashiCorp (the creators of Consul). It's almost always a custom shell script or a community-contcontributed utility. Therefore, its exact functionality, available operations, and command-line arguments can vary significantly between different versions or implementations found online or created by users. Users should inspect the script's source code or its built-in help (if available) to understand its specific behavior and dependencies (e.g., requiring consul in the PATH).

A common consul-kv script is typically written in Bash, Python, or Ruby. It parses the first argument as the operation (e.g., 'get', 'put') and subsequent arguments as the key and value, then executes the corresponding consul kv command. For example, 'consul-kv get my/key' might internally run 'consul kv get my/key'.

If you need a consul-kv utility, you can often find examples on GitHub or other community code repositories by searching for 'consul-kv script' or 'consul kv wrapper'. Alternatively, given its straightforward nature, it's relatively easy to write your own custom script tailored to your specific needs and preferred operations.

The rise of wrapper scripts like consul-kv is a common phenomenon in command-line tool ecosystems. As complex tools like HashiCorp Consul gained popularity, users often found the default CLI commands, while powerful, could be verbose for frequent, simple operations. To improve daily workflow and reduce typing, developers and operations teams began creating simplified shell scripts that internally called the official commands with pre-defined options or simpler argument parsing. consul-kv emerged as a prime example of this trend, driven by the frequent need to interact with Consul's Key-Value store for configuration management, service discovery, and dynamic data storage in distributed systems.

consul(1), consul-kv(1) (if a specific wrapper provides its own man page), curl(1) (for direct API interaction with Consul KV)