Management commands
Sometimes, you need to modify or inspect Zulip data from the command line. To help with this, Zulip ships with over 100 command-line tools implemented using the Django management commands framework.
Because management commands require server shell access, Zulip Cloud users will need to contact support for situations requiring them.
Running management commands
Start by logging in as the zulip
user on the Zulip server. Then run
them as follows:
cd /home/zulip/deployments/current
# Start by reading the help
./manage.py <command_name> --help
# Once you've determined this is the command for you, run it!
./manage.py <command_name> <args>
A full list of commands is available via ./manage.py help
; you’ll
primarily want to use those in the [zerver]
section as those are the
ones specifically built for Zulip.
As a warning, some of them are designed for specific use cases and may
cause problems if run in other situations. If you’re not sure, it’s
worth reading the documentation (or the code, usually available at
zerver/management/commands/
; they’re generally very simple programs).
Accessing an organization’s string_id
Since Zulip supports hosting multiple organizations on a single server, many management commands require you specify which organization (“realm”) you’d like to modify, either via numerical or string ID (usually the subdomain).
You can see all the organizations on your Zulip server using
./manage.py list_realms
.
zulip@zulip:~$ /home/zulip/deployments/current/manage.py list_realms
id string_id name
-- --------- ----
1 zulipinternal None
2 Zulip Community
(Note that every Zulip server has a special zulipinternal
realm
containing system-internal bots like Notification Bot
; you are
unlikely to ever need to interact with that realm.)
Unless you are
hosting multiple organizations on your Zulip server,
your single Zulip organization on the root domain will have the empty
string (''
) as its string_id
. So you can run, for example:
zulip@zulip:~$ /home/zulip/deployments/current/manage.py show_admins -r ''
Otherwise, the string_id
will correspond to the organization’s
subdomain. E.g., on it.zulip.example.com
, use
/home/zulip/deployments/current/manage.py show_admins -r it
.
manage.py shell
If you need to query or edit data directly in the Zulip database, the best way to do this is with Django’s built-in management shell.
You can get an IPython shell with full access to code within the Zulip
project using manage.py shell
, e.g., you can do the following to
change a user’s email address:
$ cd /home/zulip/deployments/current/
$ ./manage.py shell
In [1]: user_profile = get_user_profile_by_email("email@example.com")
In [2]: do_change_user_delivery_email(user_profile, "new_email@example.com")
Any Django tutorial can give you helpful advice on querying and formatting data from Zulip’s tables for inspection; Zulip’s own new feature tutorial should help you understand how the codebase is organized.
We recommend against directly editing objects and saving them using
Django’s object.save()
. While this will save your changes to the
database, for most objects, in addition to saving the changes to the
database, one may also need to flush caches, notify the apps and open
browser windows, and record the change in Zulip’s RealmAuditLog
audit history table. For almost any data change you want to do, there
is already a function in zerver.actions
with a name like
do_change_full_name
that updates that field and notifies clients
correctly.
For convenience, Zulip automatically imports zerver.models
into every management shell; if you need to
access other functions, you’ll need to import them yourself.
Other useful manage.py commands
There are dozens of useful management commands under
zerver/management/commands/
. We detail a few here:
./manage.py help
: Lists all available management commands../manage.py dbshell
: If you’re more comfortable with raw SQL than Python, this will open a PostgreSQL SQL shell connected to the Zulip server’s database. Beware of changing data; editing data directly with SQL will often not behave correctly because PostgreSQL doesn’t know to flush Zulip’s caches or notify browsers of changes../manage.py send_custom_email
: Can be used to send an email to a set of users. The--help
documents how to run it from amanage.py shell
for use with more complex programmatically computed sets of users../manage.py send_password_reset_email
: Sends password reset email(s) to one or more users../manage.py change_realm_subdomain
: Change subdomain of a realm../manage.py change_user_email
: Change a user’s email address../manage.py change_user_role
: Can change are user’s role (easier done via the UI) or give bots thecan_forge_sender
permission, which is needed for certain special API features../manage.py export_single_user
: does a limited version of the main export tools containing just the messages accessible by a single user../manage.py unarchive_channel
: Reactivates an archived channel../manage.py reactivate_realm
: Reactivates a realm../manage.py deactivate_user
: Deactivates a user. This can be done more easily in Zulip’s organization administrator UI../manage.py delete_user
: Completely delete a user from the database. For most purposes, deactivating users is preferred, since that does not alter message history for other users. See the./manage.py delete_user --help
documentation for details../manage.py clear_auth_rate_limit_history
: If a user failed authentication attempts too many times and further attempts are disallowed by the rate limiter, this can be used to reset the limit.
All of our management commands have internal documentation available
via manage.py command_name --help
.
Custom management commands
Zulip supports several mechanisms for running custom code on a self-hosted Zulip server:
Using an existing integration or writing your own webhook integration or bot.
Writing a program using the Zulip API.
Using the interactive management shell, documented above, for one-time work or prototyping.
Writing a custom management command, detailed here.
Custom management commands are Python 3 programs that run inside
Zulip’s context, so that they can access its libraries, database, and
code freely. They can be the best choice when you want to run custom
code that is not permitted by Zulip’s security model (and thus can’t
be done more easily using the REST API) and that you
might want to run often (and so the interactive manage.py shell
is
not suitable, though we recommend using the management shell to
prototype queries).
Our developer documentation on writing management commands explains how to write them.
Simply writing the command inside a deployments/
directory is not
ideal, because a new such directory is created every time you upgrade
the Zulip server.
Instead, we recommend deploying custom management commands either via
the modifying Zulip process or by storing them in
/etc/zulip
(so they are included in
backups) and then
symlinking them into
/home/zulip/deployments/current/zerver/management/
after each
upgrade.