Using the always-on ACI sandbox we can test the above solution like so. I will use curl commands as that is available on all systems. However, the answer can be translated to anything such as Postman or Python as well.
Access the always-on ACI sandbox by following this link https://devnetsandbox.cisco.com/RM/Topology. Then Click on ACI Simulator 4.2, it's at the top.
After opening it, it will tell you the endpoint, username/password: sandboxapicdc.cisco.com, admin/ciscopsdt
Here are the example curl commands. I use -i to show the response headers. -X to specify the HTTP request method. -d is used to supply the data.
We login using the api/aaaLogin.json path using a POST method. It has a JSON template to properly login and we put the username and password in there.
# curl https://sandboxapicdc.cisco.com/api/aaaLogin.json -i -X POST -d '{"aaaUser" : {"attributes" : {"name" : "admin","pwd" : "ciscopsdt" }}}'
OUTPUT:
HTTP/2 200
server: nginx/1.13.12
date: Mon, 17 May 2021 17:03:55 GMT
content-type: application/json
content-length: 1306
set-cookie: APIC-cookie=cCcAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJ+erbyCZjjkVAv1OeCci2sBawD8woUrUVK8sL6LIO9NTX/5KwfVPQTYTqtAMtNNzXUgVJsYLUkXp5Pk7vfrIPTZymWBe9NzdGVRsXnQAJ0GVP+kxa1Bts5TP51XUS33tex9zJS+MxjfG1aUnTddpDsmJb2zQzgVSHbcOjg5/DJ+J23Kx2TLf1jSHdabC57G9w==; path=/; HttpOnly; HttpOnly; Secure
access-control-allow-headers: Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept, devcookie, APIC-challenge
access-control-allow-methods: POST,GET,OPTIONS,DELETE
x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains
cache-control: no-cache="Set-Cookie, Set-Cookie2"
client-cert-enabled: false
access-control-allow-origin: http://127.0.0.1:8000
access-control-allow-credentials: false
{"totalCount":"1","imdata":[{"aaaLogin":{"attributes":{"token":"cCcAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJ+erbyCZjjkVAv1OeCci2sBawD8woUrUVK8sL6LIO9NTX/5KwfVPQTYTqtAMtNNzXUgVJsYLUkXp5Pk7vfrIPTZymWBe9NzdGVRsXnQAJ0GVP+kxa1Bts5TP51XUS33tex9zJS+MxjfG1aUnTddpDsmJb2zQzgVSHbcOjg5/DJ+J23Kx2TLf1jSHdabC57G9w==","siteFingerprint":"VOtffuqiyWZjv/iI","refreshTimeoutSeconds":"600","maximumLifetimeSeconds":"86400","guiIdleTimeoutSeconds":"1200","restTimeoutSeconds":"90","creationTime":"1621280160","firstLoginTime":"1621280160","userName":"admin","remoteUser":"false","unixUserId":"15374","sessionId":"D+DxLWA7RQOygbf+La/viw==","lastName":"","firstName":"","changePassword":"no","version":"4.1(1k)","buildTime":"Mon May 13 16:27:03 PDT 2019","node":"topology/pod-1/node-1"},"children":[{"aaaUserDomain":{"attributes":{"name":"all","rolesR":"admin","rolesW":"admin"},"children":[{"aaaReadRoles":{"attributes":{}}},{"aaaWriteRoles":{"attributes":{},"children":[{"role":{"attributes":{"name":"admin"}}}]}}]}},{"DnDomainMapEntry":{"attributes":{"dn":"uni/tn-infra","readPrivileges":"admin","writePrivileges":"admin"}}},{"DnDomainMapEntry":{"attributes":{"dn":"uni/tn-mgmt","readPrivileges":"admin","writePrivileges":"admin"}}},{"DnDomainMapEntry":{"attributes":{"dn":"uni/tn-common","readPrivileges":"admin","writePrivileges":"admin"}}}]}}]}
In the output you will see the APIC-cookie which can be used for subsequent requests (to login/authenticate). Note the APIC-cookie has the same value as the Authentication Token in the JSON output.
The cookie looks like this:
APIC-cookie=cCcAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJ+erbyCZjjkVAv1OeCci2sBawD8woUrUVK8sL6LIO9NTX/5KwfVPQTYTqtAMtNNzXUgVJsYLUkXp5Pk7vfrIPTZymWBe9NzdGVRsXnQAJ0GVP+kxa1Bts5TP51XUS33tex9zJS+MxjfG1aUnTddpDsmJb2zQzgVSHbcOjg5/DJ+J23Kx2TLf1jSHdabC57G9w==
There are other cookies, but we can ignore them.
We can use that cookie in the next request (which is the one you are curious about). This cookie takes care of the authentication. We set the cookies we want to send in the HTTP request using the following argument: -b 'key=value'.
# curl 'https://sandboxapicdc.cisco.com/api/node/mo/topology.json?rsp-subtree-include=stats&rsp-subtree-class=fabricOverallHealthHist5min' -i -X GET -b 'APIC-cookie=cCcAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJ+erbyCZjjkVAv1OeCci2sBawD8woUrUVK8sL6LIO9NTX/5KwfVPQTYTqtAMtNNzXUgVJsYLUkXp5Pk7vfrIPTZymWBe9NzdGVRsXnQAJ0GVP+kxa1Bts5TP51XUS33tex9zJS+MxjfG1aUnTddpDsmJb2zQzgVSHbcOjg5/DJ+J23Kx2TLf1jSHdabC57G9w=='
OUTPUT:
HTTP/2 200
server: nginx/1.13.12
date: Mon, 17 May 2021 17:18:10 GMT
content-type: application/json
content-length: 31143
access-control-allow-headers: Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept, devcookie, APIC-challenge
access-control-allow-methods: POST,GET,OPTIONS,DELETE
x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains
cache-control: no-cache="Set-Cookie, Set-Cookie2"
client-cert-enabled: false
access-control-allow-origin: http://127.0.0.1:8000
access-control-allow-credentials: false
{"totalCount":"1","imdata":[{"fabricTopology":{"attributes":{"childAction":"","dn":"topology","lcOwn":"local","modTs":"2021-05-17T12:26:43.901+00:00","monPolDn":"uni/fabric/monfab-default","status":""},"children":[{"fabricOverallHealthHist5min":{"attributes":{"childAction":"","cnt":"30","healthAvg":"69","healthMax":"89","healthMin":"0","healthSpct":"0","healthThr":"","healthTr":"-18","index":"2","lastCollOffset":"300","repIntvEnd":"2021-05-17T19:39:02.746+00:00","repIntvStart":"2021-05-17T19:34:02.655+00:00","rn":"HDfabricOverallHealth5min-2","status":""}}},{"fabricOverallHealthHist5min":{"attributes":{"childAction":"","cnt":"30","healthAvg":"87","healthMax":"89","healthMin":"82","healthSpct":"0","healthThr":"","healthTr":"16","index":"3","lastCollOffset":"300","repIntvEnd":"2021-05-17T19:34:02.655+00:00","repIntvStart":"2021-05-17T19:29:02.561+00:00","rn":"HDfabricOverallHealth5min-3","status":""}}}, ... continued ...
