Cisco Prime Infrastructure API
Prime Infrastructure API Documentation

Frequently Asked Questions

Additional answers may be found in the things to know section about the Prime Infrastructure API, and in the tutorials.

1. What is the syntax for requests to the Prime Infrastructure API?

The general structure of a request to the Prime Infrastructure API is as follows:

  ../webacs/api/v1/data/{RESOURCE-NAME}
            

This will list all instances of that resource. For example, ../webacs/api/v1/data/Devices will return a list of all Device instances in the system.

  ../webacs/api/v1/data/{RESOURCE-NAME}/{RESOURCE-ID}
            

This will return the unique instance identified by the given {RESOURCE-ID}. For example, ../webacs/api/v1/data/Devices/12412764 returns the "12412764" device.

Qualifiers may be added to use filtering, paging and sorting following this format:

  ../webacs/api/v1/data/{RESOURCE-NAME}?{operator-expression1}&{operator-expression2}...&{operator-expressionN}
            

Each operator expression may be a filtering criteria such as ipAddress="192.168.1.3", or a paging directive, or a sorting directive, such as .sort=-collectionTime.

Optionally, the .full=true qualifier may be added to return the full instance.

Additional RESTful services are available through the following URL pattern:

  ../webacs/api/op/{service-domain}/{service-resource}            
            

For example, ../webacs/api/op/reportservice/templates provides a way to list all report templates that may be used to create reports.

2. XML or JSON in the response?

The response to a request to the Prime Infrastructure API may be returned in one of two standard formats: XML, JSON. The format of the response may be specified in one of two ways:

  • By using adding a ".json" or ".xml" suffix to the URL used for the query. For example:
      ../webacs/api/v1/data/Devices?ipAddress="192.168.8.9".json              
                  
    returns a response in JSON format, whereas
      ../webacs/api/v1/data/Devices?ipAddress="192.168.8.9".xml              
                  
    returns a response in XML format.
  • By specifying the expected format in the request "Accept" header:
      Accept: application/json
                  
    returns a response in JSON format, whereas
      Accept: text/xml
                  
    returns a response in XML format.

By default, when nothing is specified, the response format is set to be XML.