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
Last modified on March 25, 2026
