Leveraging Cisco SD-WAN APIs is a bit different from using the Cisco DNA Center APIs, but the two Cisco support APIs and processes are quite similar. When using a Cisco DNA Center API, with a Cisco SD-WAN support API you need to provide login credentials to access the API in order to be able to utilize the Cisco API calls in simple secure and scalable manner. Some key pieces of information are necessary to successfully set up the API call in Postman:
- The URL bar must have the API call to target the Authentication API.
- The HTTP POST operation is used to send the username and password to Cisco vManage.
- The Header Content-Type key must be application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
- The body must contain keys with the j_username devnetuser and thej_password Cisco123!.
Cisco vManage Installation
The steps for connecting to network APIs are different for Cisco SD-WAN than for Cisco DNA Center. Detailed steps for setting up the Postman environment for Cisco SD-WAN are available at https://developer.cisco.com/sdwan/. The Cisco DNA Center Postman environment setup steps are available at https://developer.cisco.com/learning/tracks/ dnacenter-programmability/.
To set up a Postman environment, you can simply download steps into Postman from DevNet by going to https://developer.cisco.com/sdwan/ and sign up free and log in. By doing so, you can quickly set up an environment that contains all the services, the necessary customer authentication details and practice with the APIs without having to spend much time getting familiar with the details of Postman.
Cisco vManage Authentication API Setup for Postman
When the Postman environment is all set up and you click the Send button, the credentials are passed to vManage using the Authentication API service.
The response you receive delivers something called a Java session ID, which is displayed as JSESSIONID. This is similar to the Cisco DNA Center token you worked with earlier in this chapter. This session ID is passed to vManage for all future API calls for the services for this user. The HTTP status code 200 OK indicates a successful POST to vManage with the proper credentials.
Successful HTTP POST to vManage Authentication API
Now let’s look at another API call that collects an inventory of fabric devices within Cisco vManage. Using the HTTP GET operation, this API collects the requested information and displays it in Postman.
Successful HTTP GET to the vManage Fabric Device API
- Device ID
- System IP
- Host name
- Reachability
- Status
- Device type
- Site ID
Data Received with a Successful HTTP GET to the Cisco vManage Fabric Device API
API call has the power to gather a significant amount of information. How the data is used is up to the person making the API calls and collecting the data. Users can also automate the transfer of data from the Smart Net Total Care. All the tools, processes, technologies and APIs can be leveraged to provide tremendous value to customers and the business—from visibility into the environment to building relevant use cases to be programmatically access and consume cisco by the business or its customers.
With Cisco resources, Cisco product like Cisco APIs allow users to call and utilize API, but we must also be reminded with the copyright of those API such as: “copyright 2022 cisco developer”.
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