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Reading from etcd

Reading a value in an etcd cluster

Prerequisites

  • Install etcdctl

Procedure

Use the get subcommand to read from etcd:

$ etcdctl --endpoints=$ENDPOINTS get foo
foo
Hello World!
$

where:

  • foo is the requested key
  • Hello World! is the retrieved value

Or, for formatted output:

$ etcdctl --endpoints=$ENDPOINTS --write-out="json" get foo
{"header":{"cluster_id":289318470931837780,"member_id":14947050114012957595,"revision":3,"raft_term":4,
"kvs":[{"key":"Zm9v","create_revision":2,"mod_revision":3,"version":2,"value":"SGVsbG8gV29ybGQh"}]}}
$

where write-out="json" returns JSON output with both the key and value encoded in base64.

Last modified October 14, 2026 · Finalize multilingual documentation at doc.pg.center (91cb834)
Adapted from etcd v3.7 documentation (v3.7, commit d20f8ae), Copyright 2013-present etcd Authors, under CC BY 4.0. See attribution and change history.