Configure Postman to Execute APIs on vManage

Introduction

This document describes how to execute Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) with Postman.

System Requirements

• Postman installed
• Access to vManage and username and password credentials

Note: If you do not have Postman, download it from  https://www.postman.com/downloads/

Background Information

The primary or most-commonly-used HTTP verbs (or methods, as they are properly called) are POST, GET, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE.

These correspond to create, read, update, and delete (or CRUD) operations, respectively.

There are a number of other verbs, too, but are utilized less frequently. Of those less-frequent methods, OPTIONS and HEAD are used more often than others.

Configure Postman to Execute the APIs

Step 1. Open Postman and create a new HTTP request.

You can create a new HTTP requests if you click in any of the highlighted options.

Create a new HTTP request.

Step 2. Authenticate with your username and password credentials to vManage.

Create another HTTP request.

1. Select POST as your HTTP verb.
2. Add https://<vmanage-ip>/j_security_checknext to POST.
3. Click Body and add as KEY parameters j_username and j_password and their values respectively.
4. Click Send.

Note: In this example vManage ip address is 10.88.244.30 and the port is 5301

Note: As username and password values, we use admin.

Fullfil the parameters in Postman.

vManage authentication.

Caution: The response of this API call must be empty

Step 3. Request a token

1. Select GET as your HTTP verb.
2. Add the API call details next to GET https://<vmanage-ip>/dataservice/client/token
3. Click Send

Note: Since vManage version 19.2.1, it has been made mandatory that a successfully logged in user needs to send X-XSRG-TOKEN or CSRF token for each POST/PUT/DELETE operation via API call.

Once the API call is executed, you get a response string in the body. Save that string. The image shown exemplifies the output In Postman.

Request a token for vManage

Warning: If you did not get a token as shown in the image please repeat the step.

Step 4. Proceed to execute another API to vManage.

This example entails a POST request

1. Select the API call to execute, in our case is https:///dataservice/statistics/dpi/aggregation

Tip: If you wish to explore other API calls, please go to vManage url https://vmanage-ip:port/apidocs

2. Collect your API call body.

Note: This API call contains a body in JSON format

3. Click  Header and add as Key the string X-XSRF-TOKEN as value.

4. Click Send.

The image shown displays how your API call must appear.

DPI aggregation API call.

Step 5. Close your session

Once you have retrieved all the information needed from vManage and/or the devices, liberate resources of the vManage and eliminate the possibility for malicious users to use your session.

Run API calls in an automated environment

Save cookies and variables to be used in subsequent API calls

How to save token in a variable?

Save the token in a variable for subsequent re-use.

Save the token in a variable

When we request the token in JSON format, store it. Use the Tests tab and paste the shown lines.

var jsonData = JSON.parse(responseBody);
postman.setEnvironmentVariable("token", jsonData.token);

pm.test("Status code is 200", () => {
 pm.expect(pm.response.code).to.eql(200);
});