datumctl explain

Get documentation for a resource

Synopsis

Describe fields and structure of various resources.

This command describes the fields associated with each supported API resource. Fields are identified via a simple JSONPath identifier:

<type>.<fieldName>[.<fieldName>]

Information about each field is retrieved from the server in OpenAPI format.

Use “datumctl api-resources” for a complete list of supported resources.

datumctl explain TYPE [--recursive=FALSE|TRUE] [--api-version=api-version-group] [-o|--output=plaintext|plaintext-openapiv2]

Examples

  # Get the documentation of the resource and its fields
  kubectl explain pods

  # Get all the fields in the resource
  kubectl explain pods --recursive

  # Get the explanation for deployment in supported api versions
  kubectl explain deployments --api-version=apps/v1

  # Get the documentation of a specific field of a resource
  kubectl explain pods.spec.containers

  # Get the documentation of resources in different format
  kubectl explain deployment --output=plaintext-openapiv2

Options

Flag	Type	Description
--api-version	string	Get different explanations for particular API version (API group/version).
-h, --help	—	Help for explain.
-o, --output	string	Format in which to render the schema (plaintext, plaintext-openapiv2). (default "plaintext")
--recursive	—	Print the fields of fields (Currently only 1 level deep).

Options inherited from parent commands

Flag	Type	Description
--as	string	Username to impersonate for the operation. User could be a regular user or a service account in a namespace.
--as-group	stringArray	Group to impersonate for the operation. Can be repeated to specify multiple groups.
--as-uid	string	UID to impersonate for the operation.
--as-user-extra	stringArray	User extras to impersonate for the operation. Can be repeated to specify multiple values for the same key.
--certificate-authority	string	Path to a cert file for the certificate authority.
--disable-compression	—	If true, opt-out of response compression for all requests to the server.
--insecure-skip-tls-verify	—	If true, the server’s certificate will not be checked for validity. This will make your HTTPS connections insecure.
--log-flush-frequency	duration	Maximum number of seconds between log flushes. (default 5s)
-n, --namespace	string	If present, the namespace scope for this CLI request.
--organization	string	Organization name.
--platform-wide	—	Access the platform root instead of a project or organization control plane.
--project	string	Project name.
--request-timeout	string	The length of time to wait before giving up on a single server request. Non-zero values should contain a corresponding time unit (e.g. 1s, 2m, 3h). A value of zero means don’t timeout requests. (default "0")
-s, --server	string	The address and port of the Kubernetes API server.
--tls-server-name	string	Server name to use for server certificate validation. If not provided, the hostname used to contact the server is used.
--token	string	Bearer token for authentication to the API server.
--user	string	The name of the kubeconfig user to use.
-v, --v	Level	Number for the log level verbosity.
--vmodule	moduleSpec	Comma-separated list of pattern=N settings for file-filtered logging (only works for the default text log format).

See also

• datumctl - A CLI for interacting with the Datum platform

Auto generated by spf13/cobra on 24-Feb-2026