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Basic question about creating API pollers

I have watched a few Thwack videos about creating and assigning API pollers and I still cannot understand how to determine the URL where the request is sent. The video seems to just magically produce the URL without explaining how to find it.

Anyone help with that please?

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patriot

For example, the "API Pollers: When SNMP WOn't Cut it" video does not tell me how to obtain the URL to poll for Orion polling engine stats.

patriot

Anyone???

marcrobinson

To help with this - get the Orion SDK from github. Install the SWQL Studio and connect it to your orion server (main poller usually). Type in a swql query such as "Select top 100 nodeid, caption from orion.nodes" Run the query, then click on edit - copy query as - Curl (cmd). Paste it into notepad. That will give you the url and properly formatted request. FYI: The solarwinds orion api uses basic auth only still.

See the following links.

Orion SDK - The Orion Platform - THWACK (solarwinds.com)

GitHub - solarwinds/OrionSDK: SDK for the SolarWinds Orion platform, including tools, documentation, and samples in PowerShell, C#, Go, Perl, and Java.

REST · solarwinds/OrionSDK Wiki · GitHub

https://www.postman.com/ (VERY useful tool for API testing)

API methods (solarwinds.com)

Posting questions to thwack remains the best method to get support, find ideas, and even rant.

There is more information coming about the orion api itself, along with a feature request to include alternative authentication means. I have no timeline on those.

If you are looking to monitor other API's please search on thwack, and maybe check out the api templates. Odds are good that someone has attempted it before you. OR is familiar with the vendor and their API.

adam.beedell

Big question actually.

I tend to do a google for "$thing Swagger" or "$thing api reference"

Once you've found a document that lists the endpoints you'll have the answer to your question, but actually nothing will work, so then look through said document for "Auth" or "getting started" or simmilar. There will be a process that probably involves an account and usually a token. Read that carefully. Once auth works, then return to the previous question.

If there's no Auth stuff, then just try the URL and see what happens.

If someone's asked you to look after some random bit of web page, try opening up developer mode in browser to see some endpoints. Probably though you'll want to just check the actual webpage is OK and then ask someone what's relevant for their bit of website

If no-one has anything for you but the ask persists, then use the dev mode

adam.beedell

Note: Good luck for new Microsoft stuff it's a nightmare.

christopher.t.jones123

@patriot, any vendor that has an API should have documentation on how to consume it. The first place I would recommend looking is the vendor documents.