Howdy out there in Automation land!!! Sorry for the delay and massive gap in blog writing but well such is life and things get you busy and there we go. I was diverted to some other projects and had not had the time to come up with a good blog entry and I wanted all you, the readers, to have good things to read.... not just something I slapped on a screen! So what is the topic for this blog???
Why, the brand new REST api that CPO 3.2.1 gives us! WOW! It is something that a lot of us have been waiting a while for and the developers have granted our wish. Now you can use both SOAP and REST based APIs to make calls into CPO and open up a whole new world of fun for you and your automations.
I figured I would do a little show and tell on the REST API and get you going in the right direction. I do plan, at some point, to release a TAP full of CPO REST API calls, but as of yet... I have not had the chance to really vet it all out. The REST API supports both XML and JSON based queries and will send you back the similar. It, like the SOAP setup, supports both secure and non-secure setups and supports basic, digest, and NTLM authentication models. It also, again, provides us with an awesome framework to do some automation directly to CPO or for other coding languages to do the same. You can find the REST API guide at
http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/net_mgmt/datacenter_mgmt/Process_Orchestrator/3-21/REST/CPO_REST_API_Guide.pdf
Which is what I will cover in today's VOD! One point I need to share(that is not covered in the VOD) is that when you are matching things via query string, it is an EXACT MATCH! Unless you use wildcards. So in our VOD example, if you wanted to search for everything with "API" in the name you would want to input *API* in the name filter. Now if you just wanted to find a target called "Shaun's Target", you would just input that exact string. You will see I had some issues with that in VOD and I had to check with development on how it was implemented :) But there you go. You should be able to handle it now. I have also requested the developers update the API documentation a little bit to speak to this as (to me) it was a bit unclear!
Anyways, you want to see the REST API don't you? Well ONTO THE VIDEO!
Play recording
Thanks as always to all my wonderful readers and those who continue to stick with and use CPO. Big things are on the horizon and I hope that you will continue to use CPO and find great uses for it! If you have a really exciting automation story, please email me it! (see below) I would love to compile some stories and feature customers or individual stories in an upcoming blog!!!
AUTOMATION BLOG DISCLAIMER: As always, this is a blog and my (Shaun Roberts) thoughts on CPO and automation, my thoughts on best practices, and my experiences with the product and customers. The above views are in no way representative of Cisco or any of it's partners, etc. None of these views, etc are supported and this is not a place to find standard product support. If you need standard product support please do so via the current call in numbers on Cisco.com or email tac@cisco.com
Thanks and Happy Automating!!!
--Shaun Roberts
shaurobe@cisco.com
