Lando CLI: Essential Commands for Local Development (with Examples)
Introduction
Lando is a powerful command-line tool that helps developers streamline their local development workflows. It leverages Docker as a containerization platform to provide scalable and reproducible development environments. In this article, we will explore eight essential commands offered by Lando and go through their use cases, motivations, arguments, and example outputs.
1. lando init
Motivation
The lando init command allows you to initialize code for use with Lando. This is useful when starting a new project or when migrating an existing project to use Lando.
Arguments
There are no specific arguments required for the lando init command. However, it should be run in the root directory of your project.
Example
lando init
Output
This command creates a .lando.yml file in the root directory of your project. This file contains the configuration for your Lando environment, including services, network settings, and other customizations.
2. lando info
Motivation
The lando info command provides detailed information about your Lando app. It can be helpful when troubleshooting or understanding the underlying configuration of your development environment.
Arguments
There are no specific arguments required for the lando info command. It should be run in the root directory of your project.
Example
lando info
Output
This command displays various information about your Lando app, such as the services running, their URLs, database credentials, and other relevant details.
3. lando start
Motivation
The lando start command is used to start your app in the Lando environment. This is typically used when you want to launch your application locally for development or testing purposes.
Arguments
There are no specific arguments required for the lando start command. However, it should be run in the root directory of your project.
Example
lando start
Output
This command starts all the services defined in your .lando.yml configuration file and provides you with the URLs to access your application in a web browser.
4. lando stop
Motivation
The lando stop command is used to stop your app in the Lando environment. This is useful when you want to pause your development environment or free up resources on your machine.
Arguments
There are no specific arguments required for the lando stop command. However, it should be run in the root directory of your project.
Example
lando stop
Output
This command stops all the services defined in your .lando.yml configuration file. Your application will no longer be accessible via the provided URLs.
5. lando restart
Motivation
The lando restart command is used to restart your app in the Lando environment. This can be helpful when you make changes to your code or configuration that require a restart to take effect.
Arguments
There are no specific arguments required for the lando restart command. However, it should be run in the root directory of your project.
Example
lando restart
Output
This command stops all the services defined in your .lando.yml configuration file and starts them again. This ensures that any changes you made are applied and your app is up to date.
6. lando rebuild
Motivation
The lando rebuild command is used to rebuild your app from scratch while preserving data. This is useful when you want to recreate your development environment without losing any important data.
Arguments
There are no specific arguments required for the lando rebuild command. However, it should be run in the root directory of your project.
Example
lando rebuild
Output
This command stops all the services defined in your .lando.yml configuration file, rebuilds the necessary Docker containers, and starts them again. Any data stored within the containers is preserved.
7. lando logs
Motivation
The lando logs command allows you to display logs for your app running in the Lando environment. This is useful when you want to debug issues or monitor the output of your application.
Arguments
There are no specific arguments required for the lando logs command. However, it should be run in the root directory of your project.
Example
lando logs
Output
This command displays the logs generated by the services defined in your .lando.yml configuration file. You can see real-time output and monitor any errors or warnings.
8. lando destroy
Motivation
The lando destroy command is used to completely destroy your app and its associated resources in the Lando environment. This is useful when you no longer need your development environment and want to free up disk space.
Arguments
There are no specific arguments required for the lando destroy command. However, it should be run in the root directory of your project.
Example
lando destroy
Output
This command stops all the services defined in your .lando.yml configuration file, removes the associated Docker containers, and deletes any persisted data. Your app and its resources will be completely removed from your machine.
Conclusion
In this article, we covered eight essential commands provided by the Lando CLI. These commands allow you to initialize code, get information about your app, start, stop, restart, rebuild, monitor logs, and destroy your app. Understanding and utilizing these commands can greatly enhance your local development workflow, making it easier to build and test applications locally before deploying them to production.
