Tctl workflow show vs describe vs observe

Community Support
1

Hi,

What are the main differences between the tctl workflow show, describe and observe commands?

Thanks,
Jay.

2

  1. tctl wf show -h (to show usage and options)
    displays the entire workflow history, really useful if you want to store the event history json to a file locally, and replay it in your tests, for example:
    tctl wf show -w <wid> -r <rid> --output_filename mywfhistory.json
    Outout contains same information as what you see in the History view for a workflow exec in the Web UI.
    I personally also use this inside a Terminal window in my IDE as it allows me to from the stack trace of lets’s say an activity error to be able to directly go to the line of code where the error happened.

  2. tctl wf desc -h (to show usage and options)
    displays important info of the workflow execution, includes things like start/close execution time, pending activities, etc. This is imo meant to be more of a summary information, similar to the Summary view in the Web UI

  3. tctl workflow observe -h (to show usage and options)
    Shows workflow event history up to the point of execution, and keeps updating the history as the workflow makes progress. Useful to track workflow history of a running workflow and be able to see the history up to the point of its current execution and see it update without having to run the command again.

Make sure to also watch @Ruslan tctl presentation to learn about the awesome updates and features he has added and is adding to tctl.