WLST provides an interactive mode in which you enter a command and view the response at a command-line prompt. Interactive mode is useful for learning the tool, prototyping command syntax, and verifying configuration options before building a script
When entering commands interactively, you want to minimize typing and quickly correct any mistakes. In this blog entry, I summarize the various command line editing options available in WLST in Windows and Unix environments.
Windows environment
When running on a Windows system, WLST uses the Windows command shell for the WLST console. The Windows shell provides a number of keys that can be used to edit and recall commands. There are the common keys:
- LEFT ARROW and RIGHT ARROW to move within a command
- HOME and END to move to the start and end of a command
- UP ARROW and DOWN ARROW to move within the command history
But there are also useful keys that are not as well known
- F7 shows a dialog box with the command history
- F8 walks backwards through the command history, but only displays commands that match the text to the left of the cursor
- CTRL LEFT ARROW and CTRL RIGHT ARROW to move to the next or previous word in a command
The following link provides a good description of all of the keys supported by the Windows shell
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/winpsh/manual/hotkeys.mspx
Unix environment
In a Unix environment, WLST does not provide any command line editing capabilities. However, you can use a 3rd party tool like JLine to provide line editing in WLST.
JLine provides the following editing capabilities:
- Command history
- Line editing
- Custom key bindings
For more information about JLine refer to http://jline.sourceforge.net/index.html
To use JLIne with WLST, follow these steps.
- Download JLine from http://jline.sourceforge.net/downloads.html
Unzip the file and put the jline jar (current version is jline-0.9.94.jar) into a directory on your machine. - Add the jline jar (current version is jline-0.9.94.jar) to the CLASSPATH
- Run JLine as follows
java jline.ConsoleRunner weblogic.WLST
- Alternatively, you can copy the $WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh and then add jline.ConsoleRunner before weblogic.WLST
The default keys in JLine are:
- UP ARROW and DOWN ARROW to move within the command history
- CTRL-N and CTRL-P to move within the command history
- LEFT ARROW and RIGHT ARROW to move within a command
- CTRL-B moves to the previous character
- CTRL-G moves to the previous word
- CTRL-A moves to the beginning of the line
- CTRL-F moves to the next character
- CTRL-E moves to the end of the line
- CTRL-U deletes all characters before the cursor
- CTRL-W deletes the word before the cursor
See the JLine documentation for information on customizing the key bindings using the keybindings.properties file.
