Branching with the Neon CLI

The examples in this guide demonstrate creating, viewing, and deleting branches using the Neon CLI. For other branch-related CLI commands, refer to Neon CLI commands — branches. This guide also describes how to use the --api-key option to authenticate CLI branching commands from the command line.

The examples show the default table output format. The Neon CLI also supports json and yaml output formats. For example, if you prefer output in json, add --output json to your Neon CLI command.

Prerequisites

• The Neon CLI. See Install the Neon CLI for instructions.
• To run CLI commands, you must either authenticate through your browser or supply an API key using the --api-key option. See Connect with the Neon CLI.

Create a branch with the CLI

The following Neon CLI command creates a branch. If your Neon account has more than one project, you will be required to specify a project ID using the --project-id option. To view the CLI documentation for this command, refer to the Neon CLI reference. The command response includes the branch ID, the compute endpoint ID, and and the connection URI for connecting to the branch.

neonctl branches create

branch
┌───────────────────────┬───────────────────────┬─────────┬──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┐
│ Id                    │ Name                  │ Primary │ Created At           │ Updated At           │
├───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┤
│ br-lucky-mud-08878834 │ br-lucky-mud-08878834 │ false   │ 2023-07-24T20:22:42Z │ 2023-07-24T20:22:42Z │
└───────────────────────┴───────────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┘
endpoints
┌────────────────────────┬──────────────────────┐
│ Id                     │ Created At           │
├────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┤
│ ep-mute-voice-52609794 │ 2023-07-24T20:22:42Z │
└────────────────────────┴──────────────────────┘
connection_uris
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Connection Uri                                                                        │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ postgres://[user]:[password]@[neon_hostname]/[dbname]                                 │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

List branches with the CLI

The following Neon CLI command lists branches in your Neon project. If your Neon account has more than one project, you will be required to specify a project ID using the --project-id option. To view the CLI documentation for this method, refer to the Neon CLI reference.

neonctl branches list
┌────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┬─────────┬──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┐
│ Id                         │ Name                  │ Primary │ Created At           │ Updated At           │
├────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┤
│ br-lucky-mud-08878834      │ br-lucky-mud-08878834 │ false   │ 2023-07-24T20:22:42Z │ 2023-07-24T20:38:34Z │
├────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┤
│ br-wandering-king-30669552 │ main                  │ true    │ 2023-07-24T15:31:03Z │ 2023-07-24T16:13:48Z │
└────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┘

Delete a branch with the CLI

The following Neon CLI command deletes the specified branch. If your Neon account has more than one project, you will be required to specify a project ID using the --project-id option. To view the CLI documentation for this command, refer to the Neon CLI reference. You can delete a branch by its ID or name.

neonctl branches delete br-rough-sky-158193
┌───────────────────────┬───────────────────────┬─────────┬──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┐
│ Id                    │ Name                  │ Primary │ Created At           │ Updated At           │
├───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┤
│ br-lucky-mud-08878834 │ br-lucky-mud-08878834 │ false   │ 2023-07-24T20:22:42Z │ 2023-07-24T20:44:51Z │
└───────────────────────┴───────────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┘

Branching automation with the Neon CLI

The Neon CLI enables easy automation of branching operations for integration into your workflows or toolchains. To facilitate authentication to Neon when running a CLI command, the Neon CLI allows you to use an API key. For information about obtaining an API key, see Create an API key.

To use an API key, you can store it in an environment variable on your system. This prevents the key from being hardcoded into your automation scripts or exposed in another way. For example, you can add the following line to your shell's profile file (.bashrc or .bash_profile for bash shell):

export NEON_API_KEY=<neon_api_key>

After exporting your key, source the profile file (source ~/.bashrc or source ~/.bash_profile), or start a new terminal session.

You do not need to specify the variable name explicitly when using a Neon CLI command. A Neon CLI command looks for a NEON_API_KEY variable setting by default.

This API key configuration ensures that the API key is kept secure while still providing a way to authenticate your CLI commands. Remember, you should handle your API key with the same level of security as your other credentials.

Restoring a branch to its own or another branch's history

Using the CLI, you can restore a branch to an earlier point in its history or another branch's history using the following command:

neonctl branches restore <target id|name> <source id|name @ timestamp|lsn>

For full details about the different restore options available with this command, see Restoring using the CLI.