how do I attach devices to connections using nmcli?

The short answer is:

# nmcli con modify my-bridge connection.interface-name ens7
# nmcli con up my-bridge

However, it's never that simple - read on...

Three things are needed for the connection to be attached to the device:

Make sure that you have a working NIC (virtual in a VM). This is outside the scope of this answer as there are so many options.

Check the state of the connection.autoconnect property with:

# nmcli con show my-bridge | grep connection.autoconnect:
connection.autoconnect:                  no

and if need be, change it with:

# nmcli con modify my-bridge connection.autoconnect yes

Check the state of the connection.interface-name with:

# nmcli con show my-bridge | grep connection.interface-name
connection.interface-name           --

and if need be, set it with:

# nmcli con modify my-bridge connection.interface-name ens7

The easiest would be

nmcli device wifi connect <name ssid> password <the password>

For a solution with the password as variable: https://github.com/aurelien-git/bash/blob/master/wifi.sh

This script offer you the choice of selection and hidden passord

Related