topic Re: Location Analytics API call in Network Platform API

Location Analytics API call

rholbrook — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:05:09 GMT

I'm looking to get aggregated stats like the Location Analytics Page in the main dashbaord rather than tons of data from Aps as the volumes get very large quite quickly

Is there any API access to amalgamated data for location analytics

Thanks

Richard

Re: Location Analytics API call

aleabrahao — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:21:57 GMT

Have you checked this one? https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/scanning-api/#!overview/overview

Scanning API for Location Analytics Solutions - Cisco Meraki Documentation

Re: Location Analytics API call

sungod — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 14:13:38 GMT

If you want only counts of wireless clients in a given period, you can use...

https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/get-network-wireless-client-count-history/

But if you want to get/calculate the same info as the location analytics page there're a few ways I can think of...

use the API @alessandrodematos mentions and accept the volume of data, plus keep a database of clients so you can do the calculations over time
if you want the 'Connected' number, you probably also have to correlate with actual connection data for matching time span from https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/get-network-wireless-clients-connection-stats/

...or...

examine the way the CSV links on the location analytics page operate, emulate that in a script to periodically get the data as CSV, though I'd bet this is easier said than done.

...or...

create a screen scraper to pull the numbers from the page.

Re: Location Analytics API call

rholbrook — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 14:18:07 GMT

great thanks for those suggestions

I will check them out

I think we already have data for connected clients

Re: Location Analytics API call

rholbrook — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:57:16 GMT

Ok we are getting analytics data via the webhook (V3 API)

We get back a lot of data with IP, Pseudo MAC, etc

the data we get back does not match the totals on the dashboard

We get more hits from data than from dashboard

All we really want is the totals - not interested in the raw data

We think some devices reported back are firesticks, smart cars etc and that Meraki removes these before publishing on the dahsboard. We get manufacturer name but not real MAC addresses so its hard to filter

Re: Location Analytics API call

sungod — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 19:46:35 GMT

Not specific to the location API, it's common for people to report API data not matching what is visible in Dashboard.

The answer in general is that unless you are exactly replicating Dashboard's internal logic/timing/maths, the result will differ, and as the internal details are not public it's unlikely you'll be able to replicate them, so you'll always get different numbers.

For instance I'm pretty sure Dashboard keeps some periodically calculated/cached info for some things, unless you can hit on the exact match for this, you won't get the same results.

They're not wrong, they're just different because they weren't calculated the same way that Dashboard does it, as long as you know what they mean they are perfectly valid.

There is some explanation of how the numbers for Location Analytics are produced, it might help you get closer, note how RSSI is used for instance...

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Monitoring_and_Reporting/Location_Analytics

But if you are using the API, totals still have to be calculated, otherwise I think you'll have to resort to extracting the numbers from the Dashboard page.

The API documentation says you get clientMac in the payload...

https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/scanning-api/3-0/#observation-payloads

...if that's not what you're getting, I suggest open a case to get it fixed or documentation corrected.