Using Placeholders

JFrog CLI provides flexibility in how you download, upload, copy, or move files through the use of wildcard or regular expressions with placeholders.

Any wildcard expression enclosed in parentheses in the source path can be matched with a corresponding placeholder (e.g., {1}) in the target path. This allows you to dynamically determine the destination path and filename for an artifact.

How Placeholders Work

Using Placeholder Examples

Example 1: Upload Files into Dynamically Named Directories

This example uploads each .tgz file from the source into a new directory in the target repository that matches the file's base name. For example, the file froggy.tgz is uploaded to my-local-repo/froggy/, which creates the froggy folder in Artifactory.

jf rt u "(*).tgz" my-local-repo/{1}/ --recursive=false

Breakdown:

Result:

Example 2: Upload Files with Modified Names

This example uploads all files with names that begin with frog to the frogfiles folder, appending the suffix -up to each filename. For example, a file named froggy.tgz is renamed to froggy.tgz-up.

jf rt u "(frog*)" my-local-repo/frogfiles/{1}-up --recursive=false

Breakdown:

Result:

Example 3: Organize Uploaded Files by Extension

This example uploads all files from the current directory into the my-local-repo repository, placing them into subdirectories named after their file extensions.

jf rt u "(*).(*)" my-local-repo/{2}/{1}.{2} --recursive=false

Breakdown:

Result:

Example 4: Copy Files and Append a Suffix

This example copies all .zip files from the rabbit/ directory in the source-frog-repo to the same path in the target-frog-repo and appends .cp to each copied filename.

jf rt cp "source-frog-repo/rabbit/(*.zip)" target-frog-repo/rabbit/{1}.cp

Breakdown:

Result:

Command Reference

Supported Commands

Placeholders are supported in the following commands:

Relevant Flags

Advanced Usage

Using Regular Expressions with Placeholders

When using --regexp, you can use regex capture groups instead of wildcard patterns:

jf rt u "(.+)-sources\.jar" libs-release-local/{1}/ --regexp

This captures the artifact name before -sources.jar and uses it as a directory.

Multiple Capture Groups

You can use multiple capture groups and reference them in any order:

jf rt u "(org)/(module)/(*).jar" my-repo/{2}/{1}/{3}.jar

File Spec Usage

Placeholders also work in File Specs:

{
  "files": [
    {
      "pattern": "(*).tgz",
      "target": "my-local-repo/{1}/",
      "recursive": "false"
    }
  ]
}