.. vim: set fileencoding=utf-8 :

.. Copyright (c) 2019 Idiap Research Institute, http://www.idiap.ch/          ..
.. Contact: beat.support@idiap.ch                                             ..
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.. This file is part of the beat.backend.python module of the BEAT platform.  ..
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.. _beat-cmdline-introduction:

Introduction
============
The user objects (data formats, toolchains, experiments, etc) are stored
locally in a directory with specific structure that is commonly referred to as
a **prefix** (see "The Prefix" in section "A Hands-On-Tutorial" of `BEAT documentation`_). The user objects on the web platform are
also stored in a similar directory structure. It is possible to extract a
representation from the objects on the BEAT web server and interact with them
locally. Local object copies contain the same amount of information that is
displayed through the web interface.

The BEAT command-line utility can be used for simple functionalities (e.g.
deleting an existing algorithm or making small modifications) or advanced
tasks (e.g. database development, experiment debugging) both for local objects
and remote objects. In order to make this possible for the remote objects, the
web platform provides a RESTful API which third-party applications can use to
list, query and modify existing remote objects.


The ``beat`` command-line utility bridges user interaction with a remote BEAT
web platform and locally available objects in a seamless way:

.. command-output:: beat --help

The command-line interface is separated in subcommands, for acting on specific
objects. Actions can be driven to operate on locally installed
or remotely available objects. You'll find detailed information about
sub-commands on specific sub-sections of this documentation dedicated to that
particular type of object. In :ref:`beat-cmdline-configuration`, we cover basic usage and
configuration only.

.. include:: links.rst