Specifying Helix QAC Dashboard Credentials

Helix QAC is able to upload and download data to and from Helix QAC Dashboard using qacli commands. All these commands require authentication with Helix QAC Dashboard. There are several ways of performing the authentication:

  • Add the credentials into each command, as when issuing the command to list the Unified projects:

    • qacli admin --list-unify-project --url <[protocol://]host[:port]> --username <uname> --password <pwd>

  • Add the credentials into each command, but specify a file that holds the password:

    • qacli admin --list-unify-project --url <[protocol://]host[:port]> --username <uname> --password-file <file>

  • Use a token, as in:

    • qacli admin --list-unify-project --url <[protocol://]host[:port]> --username <uname> --token <token>

For an automated set of scripts, the advantage of using a token is that it avoids having a password listed in each command, possibly scattered across many scripts. A token is created in a single place, using the following command, where the --url parameter is the address of the Helix QAC Dashboard server:

qacli auth --dashboard  --url <[protocol://]host:port> --username <uname> --password-file <path>

This returns a string, which can be used in subsequent commands, as shown in the --list-unify-project examples just above. Tokens are time-limited, with a default duration of one day. Use the --expire-token parameter to specify the number of days prior to expiry.

For reasons of brevity, all of the examples in the following sections use the token mechanism, but in each case it is also possible to use the full set of url/username/password (or password-file) options.