Introduction

NetMRI collects, organizes, and displays information in an array of customizable tables, graphs, and reports covering virtually every aspect of network operations. NetMRI search functions can be used to find and filter stored information. Many of NetMRI’s information and results displays can be exported as CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, and PDF documents. Before developing a program to extract data from the NetMRI database using the API, determine whether it would be easier to obtain the needed information through the NetMRI GUI.

The NetMRI Application Programming Interface (API) enables external programs to retrieve information about devices, interfaces, VLANs, and other network entities from the NetMRI database, and to retrieve information about neighbor relationships between devices, and send commands to NetMRI.

The API is intended for use by customers wanting to leverage or reformat information from the NetMRI database for use in other systems and applications. Typical applications include:

• Custom External programs can extract data from NetMRI to populate portions of dashboards and displays that integrate data from multiple systems. Such applications may consolidate status, trends, and urgent issues in operations centers or management displays.
• Custom External programs may transfer NetMRI data to third-party reporting systems to create reports with specialized content and with standard formatting. These reports may combine data from multiple systems.
• Configuration Management Database will leverage NetMRI as the trusted source for network device asset inventory, properties, topology, configuration, and health.
• Asset management Some organizations have separate asset management systems and can obtain asset information from NetMRI, similar to CMDB projects.

Primary changes in the current API consist of updates to existing models, objects, and methods to include the necessary relationships with newly added nested device group objects.

The current language-independent API Core provides bidirectional functionality, enabling clients to both retrieve data and send commands to NetMRI.

This enables clients to do the following:

• Send HTTP requests using GET, or using POST with MIME types application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data, application/json, or application/xml.
• Receive HTTP responses with MIME type application/json or application/xml.
• Query and search over 70 different types of objects within the NetMRI data model.
• Configure the NetMRI discovery ranges and other settings.
• Schedule and run jobs on the NetMRI programmatically.
• Associate job custom fields with jobs programmatically. For more information, see NetMRI API Core.
• The Perl/Python API is a set of Perl/Python modules built on top of the API Core. These modules handle authentication, formatting of URL requests, and parsing of XML returned documents. This implementation of the API enables more focus on program logic. NetMRI includes a Perl and Python package providing adherence to Perl/Python conventions, and added functionality. For more information, see Migration to Current API Core.

The system maintains security by requiring authentication based on the same user names and passwords used by the NetMRI graphical user interface.

Effective use of the API requires programming skills. If you are not a programmer, you will need a programmer’s help to develop applications to query the NetMRI database through the API, process the resulting data, and send commands. While any language can be used with the API Core, Perl/Python is an appropriate choice. As its name implies, interactions with the Perl/Python API are implemented using Perl/Python scripts.