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Bulk editing managed objects

Example: Remove prefix for all device​

Scenario

Devices have been registered in Cumulocity, however there was a naming error, and some devices have an incorrect prefix "MQTT Device " included in the .name property on the device managed object.

Goal

Rename incorrect devices be removing the prefix from the name.

Procedure

  1. Find the devices which the incorrect prefix in their names

    c8y devices list --name "MQTT*"

    You can use additional fields to narrow down your search (if required)

    c8y devices list --name "MQTT*" --query "type eq 'my_Custom_type'"

  2. Check that the number of matches (devices) is what you expect

    c8y devices list --name "MQTT*" --withTotalPages --pageSize 1

    The total number of devices can be read from the totalPages property.

    Verifying the results is a very important step, and time should be taken to check if the results does not include any other unexpected results.

  3. Create your update command which will update the name of the device

    Now that you have refined the data that you want to edit, but don't execute the command just yet. This is where the Dry parameter is very useful!

    Since we are not just setting the name of the device, we can use a template which references each input value received via the pipeline (stdin). The template can use an in-built jsonnet function to remove the unwanted prefix from the name. 

    c8y devices list --name "MQTT*" -p 1 |
        c8y devices update \
            --template "{name: std.strReplace(input.value.name, 'MQTT Device ', '')}" \
            --dry

  4. Do a test run on one device (use the page size to limit the scope)

    c8y devices list --name "MQTT*" -p 1 |
        c8y devices update \
            --template "{name: std.strReplace(input.value.name, 'MQTT Device ', '')}"

    Since we are not using the force parameter, we will still be prompted before each change. This protects you against accidentally executing the command for all of the result set if you forgot to change the pageSize parameter to 1.

  5. When you are happy with your command, then you can execute it on each device in the query and use the force parameter

    c8y devices list --name "MQTT*" -p 400 |
        c8y devices update \
            --template "{name: std.strReplace(input.value.name, 'MQTT Device ', '')}"

  6. Verify that you no longer have any devices which match your original query.

    c8y devices list --name "MQTT*" --withTotalPages -p 1