Working with the Cisco UCS XML API

Working with Cisco UCS systems on a daily basis, I decided to take some time this weekend to learn more about the XML API.  Honestly, it is a thing of beauty and simplicity.  Working with the Cisco UCS XML API is as simple as sending an HTTP POST with an XML document to the UCS Manager and getting the response.  That’s it.  Isn’t that great?

Seeing as I have a couple of projects that will benefit from interacting with UCS systems, I decided to write a script in PHP to login and logout of a UCS for starters.  Then Rob Markovic asked, “Why not PowerShell?”.  So I wrote the same script in PowerShell as well.  I do need to give credit to Steve Chambers for this post: Access UCS API with Ruby.  This was beneficial as I was reading the XML API documentation and starting to work on my scripts.

***Disclaimer***

I am not an expert in PHP or PowerShell.  I am providing this information for academic purposes only to show how easy it is to work with the UCS XML API.  I am also not responsible for any damage this may cause your systems.

***Disclaimer***

One thing you’ll notice with the Cisco UCS XML API is that the only methods that require a username and password to be passed is the aaaLogin and aaaRefresh methods.  All other methods require a cookie to be passed, which is only obtained by logging in or refreshing your session to the UCS Manager.

Let’s start with what’s needed for PHP to work with the Cisco XML API.  I downloaded and installed HTTP_Request2 from PEAR to make the HTTP call easier.

require_once HTTP/Request2.php;

Now we need to set the url of our server and the XML parameters for logging into the UCS system.

$url = “http://server ip or dns/nuova”;

$aaaLogin = “<aaaLogin inName=’username’ inPassword=’password’ />”;

With the url and XML set, we can now create our HTTP request for logging in.

$request = new HTTP_REQUEST2($url, HTTP_REQUEST2::METHOD_POST);

$request->setHeader(“Content-type: text/xml”);

$request->setBody($aaaLogin);

After the request is created, we can send the data to the UCS Manager and get our response.

$response = $request->send();

To make it easier to work with the response, we are going to create SimpleXMLElement from the response.

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($response->getBody());

Now to get our cookie from the XML response, we just need to do the following:

$outCookie = $xml->attributes()->outCookie

With the cookie now obtained, we are free to call other UCS XML API methods for interacting with the system.  To logout, we need to create the logout xml and issue an HTTP POST with this data.  (I will not repeat the code for issuing the HTTP POST).  Here is the XML for logging out of the system.

$aaaLogout = “<aaaLogout inCookie=’cookie for session’ />”;

To verify status of logout, you look at the outStatus attribute from the XML response.

$outStatus = $xml->attributes()->outStatus;

Here is how to do the same with PowerShell.

$url = “http://server ip or dns/nuova”

$aaaLogin = “<aaaLogin inName=’username’ inPassword=’password’ />

$request = [System.Net.HttpWebRequest] [System.Net.HttpWebRequest]::Create($url)

$request.Method = “POST”

$request.ContentType = “text/xml”

$sendData = new-object System.IO.StreamWriter($request.GetRequestStream())

$sendData.Write($aaaLogin)

$sendData.Close()

$response = $request.GetResponse()

$sr = new-object System.IO.StreamReader($response.GetReponseStream())

$xml = [xml] $sr.ReadToEnd()

$outCookie = $xml.aaaLogin.outCookie

To logout with PowerShell, we create the aaaLogout XML with the cookie we just obtained and issue another HTTP Request (code not repeated).

$aaaLogout =”<aaaLogout inCookie=’cookie for session’ />”

And to get the status of the logout.

$outstatus = $xml->aaaLogout->outStatus

There you have it.  PHP and PowerShell example code for logging into and out of Cisco UCS Manager.  You can find the programmer’s guide here:  Cisco UCS Manager XML API Programmer’s Guide.  I would also suggest checking out these Cisco blog posts on the Cisco UCS Manager XML API by John McDonough: UCS XML API “Hello World”, UCS XML API “curl and xml”, and UCS XML API Query Methods.

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