pocli 0.4.0

Python-based command-line client for Nextcloud

# Python Nextcloud (formerly ownCloud) Client (pocli)

Copyright (c) 2016 - 2025 Florian Kaiser, Klaus Reuter

<https://gitlab.mpcdf.mpg.de/mpcdf/pocli>

<https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pocli>

Released under the MIT License (MIT), see the LICENSE file.

## Introduction

The pocli package provides a lightweight Nextcloud (formerly ownCloud) command line client for basic file operations such as upload, download, directory creation and listing, and deletion. It is written in Python and built upon the nc-py-api (pyocclient in earlier versions) Python package.

The development of pocli was motivated by the need for a tool to quickly up- or download single (or few) files on a computer which is operated without any graphical user interface (i.e. a typical HPC system), and where it may not be desirable to install the official client software. In case you have more complex requirements (continuous synchronization), please use the official client.

A typical use case is:

• Upload a tarball from the login node of a HPC system to your Nextcloud server using pocli.

• Log in to a Nextcloud server from your laptop via the web browser and share the tarball with other users (e.g. by sending a download URL via email).

Another use case would be:

• Upload a tarball from HPC system A to your Nextcloud server using pocli.

• Download the tarball to HPC system B from your Nextcloud server using pocli.

Note that intentionally no recursive operations are supported.

## Requirements and installation

pocli was developed and tested with Python 2.7 (now deprecated) and Python 3.X. Please drop us a line in case pocli does not work with other (newer) Python versions.

The package including its dependencies can be installed easily via pip:

pip install –user pocli

Alternatively, the package can be installed from the source distribution.

Make sure to add the installation directory to the PATH environment variable, on a Unix system this is for example "~/.local/bin". The previous examples pass the "--user" flag in order to work purely in the user's homedirectory. In case this flag is omitted, system-wide locations are chosen. Alternatively, virtual environments can be used.

## Functionality examples (optional arguments are given in parentheses)

The pocli package provides the oc command. Moreover, the alias ds can be used interchangeably to comply with the naming of the MPCDF DataShare service. It takes positional and named arguments in analogy to e.g. git. The following examples illustrate the basic usage:

• basic help

oc –help

• command-specific help

oc command –help

• list remote files and folders, defaults to "/"

oc ls <remote_folder>

• create remote directory "temp"

oc mkdir temp

• upload single file to the Nextcloud root directory

oc put file1

• upload multiple files to the Nextcloud "temp" directory

oc put –directory=temp file1 file2 file3

• download single file from Nextcloud to the current working directory

oc get file1

• download multiple files to the local "temp" directory

oc get –directory=temp file1 file2 file3

• remove remote file(s)

oc rm file1 file2

• check if a connection to the server can be established successfully based on the present configuration

oc check

## Configuration

The connection to an Nextcloud instance requires a valid configuration. The configuration file in JSON format is located at "~/.ocrc" and is created at the first invocation of the oc command. The initial default configuration is for the MPCDF DataShare service, however, it can be configured freely to connect to other Nextcloud instances. Simply adapt the configuration file to your needs. No credentials are ever stored in "~/.ocrc".

Further configuration can be overridden by environment variables:

• OC_CONFIG_FILE can override the location of the configuration file

• OC_USER can override the username of the configuration file

• OC_SERVER can override the server address of the configuration file

• OC_DEBUG can override the DEBUG setting of the configuration file

## Password handling

Security concerns arise in particular if the Nextcloud password is identical to the password used for other services at the same site. To this end, by default, the oc executable asks the user to type the password at each invocation.