Marketplace Content

How to discover, download, and install Mendix Marketplace content (modules, widgets) from the command line with mxcli marketplace.

Authenticate first

Marketplace access needs a Mendix Personal Access Token (PAT). Create one at user-settings.mendix.com (Developer Settings → Personal Access Tokens), then:

mxcli auth login                 # prompts for the PAT
# or, non-interactively (CI):
mxcli auth login --token <PAT>
# or via the environment:
export MENDIX_PAT=<PAT>

mxcli auth status                # confirm it validates

Credentials are stored at ~/.mxcli/auth.json (mode 0600).

Discover content

# search by name/publisher
mxcli marketplace search "database connector"

# show one item's details (by content id)
mxcli marketplace info 2888

# list available versions, optionally filtered by Mendix compatibility
mxcli marketplace versions 2888
mxcli marketplace versions 2888 --min-mendix 10.24.0

Each item has a numeric content id (shown by search/info); you pass it to download and install.

Search caching. The marketplace Content API has no server-side search, so the first search fetches the full catalog listing and caches it under ~/.mxcli/marketplace-catalog-<profile>.json for a day. After that, searches (for any keyword) are served from the cache instantly. Pass --refresh to bypass the cache and re-fetch (e.g. to pick up a brand-new module).

Download a `.mpk`

# latest version, into the current directory under its CDN filename
mxcli marketplace download 2888

# a specific version, to a chosen path
mxcli marketplace download 2888 --version 7.0.2 -o ./mods/dbc.mpk

The download is atomic (written to a temp file and renamed), so a cancelled run never leaves a truncated .mpk.

Install into a project

install downloads the content and places it according to its type:

mxcli marketplace install 20 -p app.mpr               # a widget
mxcli marketplace install 2888 --version 7.0.3 -p app.mpr   # a module

Content type	What `install` does
Widget	Copies the `.mpk` into the project’s `widgets/` folder (overwrites on update). Reload in Studio Pro or run `mx update-widgets` to pick it up.
Module (new)	Imports it via `mx module-import` (requires a matching mxbuild — run `mxcli setup mxbuild -p app.mpr` if missing).
Module (already present)	Reported, not modified — see below.
Theme / Starter App / Sample	Downloaded to disk with import instructions (import via Studio Pro).

Updating an existing module

Updating a module that is already in the project is not done automatically. install detects it, reports the installed and target versions, and stops:

Module "DatabaseConnector" is already installed (version 7.0.1).
Target version: 7.0.3.
In-place module updates are not applied automatically (they can discard local
edits and change persistent-entity IDs, which loses data). Update via Studio Pro.

Two reasons make automatic in-place module updates unsafe:

Local edits. Teams sometimes modify a marketplace module after importing it; a blind re-import would discard those changes.
Persistent-entity IDs. A fresh import assigns new entity $IDs. The runtime database keys data by entity ID, so re-importing a module with persistent entities would make the runtime treat them as different entities — losing data.

Studio Pro’s Marketplace Update performs an ID-preserving merge that the mx CLI does not expose, so module updates are left to Studio Pro for now.

Keyboard shortcuts