Chapter 1. Introduction to Hammer

Hammer provides faster interaction with Satellite than the Satellite web UI through shell features, scripting capabilities, and tool integration.

Hammer serves as a human-friendly interface to Satellite API. Use Hammer for interactive tasks and testing API calls, but use the API directly for better performance when executing many commands in scripts.

For example, to test responses to API calls before applying them in a script, use the --debug option to inspect API calls that Hammer issues: hammer --debug organization list.

In the background, each Hammer command first establishes a binding to the API, then sends a request. This can have performance implications when executing a large number of Hammer commands in sequence. In contrast, a script communicating directly with the API establishes the binding only once.

Use the --help flag with Hammer CLI commands to view the built-in help documentation.

View the full list of hammer options and subcommands by executing:

$ hammer --help

Use --help to inspect any subcommand, for example:

$ hammer organization --help

You can search the help output using grep, or redirect it to a text viewer, for example:

$ hammer | less