Another quick bit today – this is the basic framework for using the REST API in ArubaOS. Lots of info at the Aruba Developer Hub. This is primarily for executing show commands and getting the data back in a structured JSON format.

However, be aware that not all show commands return structured JSON – some will return something vaguely XMLish, and some will return the regular text output inside a JSON wrapper (originally the showcommand API endpoint was just a wrapper for the actual commands and would just return the CLI output, as it still does for several commands)

You can always go to https://<controller IP>:4343/api (after logging in) and get a Swagger doc for all the available API calls – although owing to system limitations, the description of those endpoints isn’t generally there, but it can be found in the full AOS8 API reference.

This blog entry does not deal with sending data to the ArubaOS device.

#!/usr/bin/python3

import requests
import json
import warnings
import sys
import xmltodict


aosDevice = "1.2.3.4"
username = "admin"
password = "password"
httpsVerify = False



#Set things up

if httpsVerify == False :
	warnings.filterwarnings('ignore', message='Unverified HTTPS request')

baseurl = "https://"+aosDevice+":4343/v1/"


headers = {}
payload = ""
cookies = ""

session=requests.Session()
## Log in and get session token

loginparams = {'username': username, 'password' : password}
response = session.get(baseurl+"api/login", params = loginparams, headers=headers, data=payload, verify = httpsVerify)
jsonData = response.json()['_global_result']

if response.status_code == 200 :

	#print(jsonData['status_str'])
	sessionToken = jsonData['UIDARUBA']

#	print(sessionToken)
else :
	sys.exit("Login Failed")

reqParams = {'UIDARUBA':sessionToken}

def showCmd(command, datatype):
	showParams = {
		'command' : 'show '+command,
		'UIDARUBA':sessionToken
			}
	response = session.get(baseurl+"configuration/showcommand", params = showParams, headers=headers, data=payload, verify = httpsVerify)
	#print(response.url)
	#print(response.text)
	if datatype == 'JSON' :
		#Returns JSON
		returnData=response.json()
	elif datatype == 'XML' :
		# Returns XML as a dict
		print(response.content)
		returnData = xmltodict.parse(response.content)['my_xml_tag3xxx']
	elif datatype == 'Text' :
		# Returns an array
		returnData =response.json()['_data']
	return returnData




print(showCmd('clock', 'Text')[0])


print(json.dumps(showCmd('dds debug peers', 'JSON'),indent=2, sort_keys=False))



## Log out and remove session


response = session.get(baseurl+"api/logout", verify=False)
jsonData = response.json()['_global_result']

if response.status_code == 200 :

	#remove 
	token = jsonData['UIDARUBA']
	del sessionToken
	#print("Logout successful. Token deleted.")
else :
	del sessionToken
	sys.exit("Logout failed:")

If you prefer, I have shared a Postman collection for working with the basics.