Random API Methodology thoughts

[Andy_Bretten]

Disclaimer:  not a hard core programmer , so I might say crazy things.

I thought I would just share my initial impressions and feedback on a simple proof of concept I've been working on with the new R80 API.

Adding a host.    On the surface this is simple....format a JSON query with a couple of fields and you can add an object to Smartcenter,  awesome.  That works.

Now I've complicated it by purposely sending a duplicate object IP address.   Now I get a HTTP 500 back.

Ok I think,   I need to check for dupe, before adding the object.

Ok I cant search for a match via the API (unless I've missed that),  so I can dump a list of hosts.

Ok that just gives me a list of object names back,  so now I start recursively doing a show host on every host object to suck in all the ip addresses into my perl script to decide if I'm about to dupe.

This feels like alot of work I'm creating,  anyone want to share any thoughts on the API methodology here ?

EDIT: ok so I realized there was a "show more" link in the API docs for "show-hosts" and I can send "details-level":"full" to get the ip addresses of the host objects ... awesome.

[Uri_Bialik]

I'd suggest the following flow:

1) call add-host (without checking if another object with the same ip-address already exists).

2) If the server responds with an error message, check the message

2.1) If an object with the same name already exist, call "show-host" and provide it with the object name - if it has the correct IP address - you're done. If it has a different IP address, you should probably give your new host a different name.

2.2) If you get a "duplicate ip-address warning", you can search the objects database like this:

POST {{server}}/show-objects

Content-Type: application/json

X-chkp-sid: {{session}}

{

  "in" : [ "text", "192.168.0.1" ],

  "details-level" : "full"

}

or in mgmt_cli syntax:

mgmt_cli show objects in.0 text in.1 192.168.0.1 details-level full

This search should have the same results as searching the objects list in the GUI.

[Uri_Bialik]

Typing this (long) line in "expert-mode", shows the names of all the objects that match the search for "192.168.0.1":

[Expert@gw-8b3711:0]# mgmt_cli show objects in.0 text in.1 192.168.0.1  -r true --format json| $CPDIR/jq/jq ".objects[] | .name"

"host1"

[Expert@gw-8b3711:0]#