lr-gladiator

CLI + Python client for interacting with the Arena PLM.

Install

pip install lr-gladiator

Quick start

Login

Interactive login (prompts for username/password):

gladiator login

Non-interactive (for CI/CD):

export GLADIATOR_USERNAME="<insert username>"
export GLADIATOR_PASSWORD="<insert password>"
gladiator login --ci

By default, this stores session details at:

~/.config/gladiator/login.json

Commands

Get the latest approved revision for an item:

gladiator latest-approved 890-1001

Search for items by number pattern:

gladiator list-items 104*

Output JSON instead of a table:

gladiator list-items 104* --output json

Search for items by free text (matches Item Name and Description):

gladiator search-item "wireless module"

Output JSON instead of a table:

gladiator search-item "wireless module" --output json

List all files on an item (defaults to the latest approved revision):

gladiator list-files 890-1001

Output JSON instead of a table:

gladiator list-files 890-1001 --output json

Display a quick summary for an item revision (number, name, description, category, lifecycle, etc.):

gladiator info 890-1001

Emit machine-readable JSON instead of the Rich table:

gladiator info 890-1001 --output json

The summary includes the Arena web URL (Item URL) so you can click straight into the item from the terminal output.

Download the item's thumbnail (saved as <item>.png/.jpg) while fetching the summary:

gladiator info 890-1001 --picture --rev WORKING

Write metadata to an item's WORKING revision. --version sets the revision number, which for software items carries the release version — this is what a CI job stamps on a release candidate so the bundle can be downloaded and verified before the ECO is approved:

gladiator set-meta 504-1001 --version 0.43.2 --description "CLI + Python client for Arena PLM"

Only the WORKING revision is writable; an approved revision is released history. Attributes left unset keep their current value, and a run requesting values Arena already holds makes no request at all, so re-running is free. Preview first with --dry-run:

gladiator set-meta 504-1001 --version 0.44.0 --dry-run

Clearing an attribute is not supported: an empty value is rejected rather than written, because clearing needs Arena's setnull. Clear one from the Arena UI.

List the Bill of Materials (BOM) for an item:

gladiator get-bom 890-1001

Recursively expand subassemblies up to two levels deep:

gladiator get-bom 890-1001 --recursive --max-depth 2

Add or update a BOM line on the working revision:

gladiator add-to-bom 890-1001 510-0005 --qty 2 --refdes R1

Target a different revision or inspect the raw API response:

gladiator add-to-bom 890-1001 510-0005 --parent-rev EFFECTIVE --output json

Download attached files to a directory named after the article:

gladiator get-files 890-1001

Specify a different output directory:

gladiator get-files 890-1001 --out downloads/

Recursively download all files in the full BOM tree:

gladiator get-files 890-1001 --recursive

--rev names the revision of the item on the command line. A selector — EFFECTIVE, WORKING, or no --rev at all — is meaningful for every item, so it applies to the whole tree. A revision label such as A3 exists only on the item that carries it, so each sub-assembly is instead downloaded at the revision its parent's BOM line pins (EFFECTIVE for a line that pins none):

gladiator get-files 890-1001 --recursive --rev A3

--rev WORKING walks the tree at each item's working revision, falling back to its effective revision for an item with no change in progress. A revision label that no item carries is still an error, reported against the item you named.

--max-depth stops the walk at a given depth. Rich output warns on stderr and --output json reports depth_limited: the number of items reached at the limit, whose children were not visited. Treat a non-zero value as "may be incomplete" rather than as a truncation count — whether those items have children is not checked, since that costs a request each. Zero means the tree is complete.

Also write a .arena.json metadata file (item info + file list) into the output directory. The file is idempotent for a given revision, so it is safe to commit and diff:

gladiator get-files 890-1001 --meta-data

Combined with --recursive, a .arena.json is written into every item's directory across the BOM tree:

gladiator get-files 890-1001 --recursive --meta-data

By default, a file whose local copy is proven byte-identical to the Arena file is skipped rather than re-downloaded. The proof is content-based: files uploaded by this tool carry sha256(content)[:16] as their edition, so a 16-lowercase-hex edition is a content fingerprint; the local file's size is checked against the live size first, and only a match is then hashed and compared. A file whose edition is not a 16-hex content hash (Arena-UI uploads, web links, manual labels like A or 1) is always re-downloaded. Use --no-cache to force a full download:

gladiator get-files 890-1001 --no-cache

--trust-metadata additionally skips a file whose edition is not a content hash when an existing .arena.json sidecar records the same edition for that filename and the local size matches the live size. This trusts metadata rather than content, which is why it is opt-in and requires --cache (passing it with --no-cache prints a warning and is ignored). Its documented weakness: a local file matching the recorded edition and size but not the actual content stays stale.

gladiator get-files 890-1001 --trust-metadata

In every case — --cache, --no-cache, or --trust-metadata — the bytes written to disk, including .arena.json, are identical; only the reported counts and the HTTP requests issued differ. --output json reports downloaded and cached counts alongside count, files, and metadata (and depth_limited with --recursive).

Upload or update a file on the working revision:

gladiator upload-file 890-1001 ./datasheet.pdf --category "CAD Data" --title "Datasheet"

Preview what would happen without writing anything:

gladiator upload-file 890-1001 ./datasheet.pdf --dry-run

The dry run resolves and validates --category, so a clean dry run guarantees a real run will not reject the category after the existing attachment has been removed.

Inspect a change and see which views are affected (columns show * when the view is included in the change):

gladiator get-change CCO-0006

Show the raw change payload instead of the Rich table:

gladiator get-change CCO-0006 --output json

Add an item (WORKING revision by default) to an existing change:

gladiator add-to-change --change CCO-0003 510-0001

Create a new change order (effectivity and deadline flags optional):

gladiator create-change --title "Fan bracket update" --description "Replace bracket" --category "Engineering Change Order"

The command prints a summary table with the newly assigned change number. Use --output json to inspect the raw response payload.

Install the LLM skill

Install the bundled skill for Claude Code and GitHub Copilot (run from your project root):

gladiator install-skill

This installs to:

• ~/.claude/skills/lr-gladiator/ — Claude Code
• .github/instructions/lr-gladiator.instructions.md — GitHub Copilot
• .vscode/settings.json — enables Copilot instruction files

Print the skill to stdout (pipe to any LLM):

gladiator install-skill --show

Output control

Most commands support a JSON output mode. Example:

gladiator get-bom 890-1001 --output json

Example sessions

Human-readable

$ gladiator list-files 101-1031
         Files for 101-1031 rev (latest approved)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name            ┃     Size ┃ Edition ┃ Category ┃ Type ┃ Location ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 101-1907 E.PDF  │   171396 │ 1       │ Firmware │ FILE │          │
└─────────────────┴──────────┴─────────┴──────────┴──────┴──────────┘

JSON output

$ gladiator list-files 101-1031 --output json
{
  "article": "101-1031",
  "revision": null,
  "files": [
    {
      "id": "00000000000000000000",
      "fileGuid": "11111111111111111111",
      "name": "101-1907 E.PDF",
      "filename": "101-1907 E.PDF",
      "size": 171396,
      "haveContent": true,
      "downloadUrl": "https://api.arenasolutions.com/v1/files/11111111111111111111/content",
      "edition": "1",
      "updatedAt": "2016-12-06T12:31:33Z",
      "attachmentGroupGuid": "22222222222222222222",
      "storageMethodName": "FILE",
      "location": null,
      "category": "Firmware"
    }
  ]
}

Change inspections use a tabular view that highlights impacted areas. Example output for gladiator get-change CCO-0006:

                Affected items for CCO-0006
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┓
┃ Item Number ┃ Affected Rev ┃ New Rev ┃ Disposition   ┃ Notes  ┃ BOM ┃ Specs ┃ Files ┃ Source ┃ Cost ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━┩
│ 510-0001    │ A            │ B       │ In Stock: Use │ Review │  *  │       │   *   │        │   *  │
└─────────────┴──────────────┴─────────┴───────────────┴────────┴─────┴───────┴───────┴────────┴──────┘

Programmatic use

Using an existing session

from gladiator import ArenaClient, load_config

client = ArenaClient(load_config())
rev = client.get_latest_approved_revision("890-1001")
files = client.list_files("890-1001", rev)

Programmatic login

Option 1: Direct function call (recommended)

from gladiator import ArenaClient, load_config, arena_login

# Authenticate and save config to current working directory as login.json
arena_login(
    username="username@company.com",
    password="password",
)

# Now use the client
client = ArenaClient(load_config())

Option 1b: Save to custom path

from pathlib import Path
from gladiator import ArenaClient, load_config, arena_login

# Save config to a specific location
arena_login(
    username="username@company.com",
    password="password",
    config_path=Path.home() / ".config/gladiator/login.json",
)

# Now use the client
client = ArenaClient(load_config())

Option 2: Login without saving to disk

from gladiator import ArenaClient, arena_login

# Authenticate but don't save
config = arena_login(
    username="username@company.com",
    password="password",
    save_to_disk=False,
)

# Use the config directly
client = ArenaClient(config)

Option 3: Using environment variables with CLI

import subprocess
import os

# Set credentials
os.environ["GLADIATOR_USERNAME"] = "username@company.com"
os.environ["GLADIATOR_PASSWORD"] = "password"

# Run login command
subprocess.run(["gladiator", "login", "--ci"], check=True)

# Now use the client
from gladiator import ArenaClient, load_config
client = ArenaClient(load_config())

FAQ

• Where is the config kept?

  • CLI: ~/.config/gladiator/login.json (override with GLADIATOR_CONFIG)
  • Programmatic arena_login(): Saves to ~/.config/gladiator/login.json by default, or custom path via config_path parameter

• How do I run non-interactively? Make sure to give all required arguments. Also pass --ci to stop output of sensitive information such as username or passwords.

• What does --recursive do? Expands subassemblies and downloads or lists all contained items up to the given --max-depth.

• How does Gladiator handle authentication? It performs a /login call and stores the resulting arenaSessionId for reuse. If it expires, re-run gladiator login.

• What happens on a transient Arena error (HTTP 429/5xx)? Idempotent requests (GET/HEAD/PUT/DELETE/OPTIONS/TRACE) are retried automatically with exponential backoff — 3 attempts by default, honouring any Retry-After header. POST is not retried, since uploads and change creation are not guaranteed idempotent. Override the retry count with the GLADIATOR_HTTP_RETRIES environment variable. If retries are exhausted the command reports the method, URL, status and body, and notes that Arena returned a server-side error so you can re-run.