This document discusses how to interface with Zabbix using the Zabbix API and related tools. It describes the Zabbix API and how it enables controlling Zabbix through programs. It also covers some command line and library tools for the Zabbix API as well as other protocols like Zabbix Get and Zabbix Sender that can be used to send and retrieve data from Zabbix.

1. Zabbix API and related tools - How to interface with Zabbix- Takanori Suzuki

2. Takanori Suzuki Member of Zabbix-JP, Zabbix community in Japan.

3. Reported bugs and Posted patches. Crashing bug patch

4. Zabbix proxy stop sending data bug patch

5. Disk monitoring improvement patch for LVM

7. Zabbix An enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring solution. auto-discovery of servers and network devices

8. distributed monitoring with centralised WEB administration

9. server software for many Un*x

10. native high performance agents for almost all famous OS

11. agent-less monitoring

12. web-based interface

13. etc…

14. Zabbix API

15. Zabbix API Zabbix supports Zabbix API from 1.8

16. Zabbix API enables us to control Zabbix by program.

17. Though API spec is not fixed as far as 1.8.x release, some users started to use API Before Zabbix API No command line tool to control Zabbix monitoring settings

18. There is no way to control Zabbix from external programs except directly executing DB query. After Zabbix API We can control Zabbix easily from programs.

19. Non official command line tools are available.

20. Mobile phone applications for Zabbix are released

21. Zabbix API Zabbix API Refernce URL: http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/1.8/api Functions Get, create, delete, update are supported on hosts, items, triggers, actions and many other objects. Now there are many useful tools zabcon, command line zabbix managing tool

22. Libraries for API, easy to use from perl, php, ruby and python.

23. zabcon One of the earliest programs using Zabbix API

24. Enables controlking Zabbix by command line and interactive shell

25. Installable by Ruby gem

26. Site URL: http://trac.red-tux.net/wiki/zbx_api/zabcon

27. zabcon: How to use Executing ./zabcon.rb it works as interactive shell

28. By redirecting Zabbix commands, it returns result. $ echo get host|./zabcon.rb hostid,host 10017,Zabbix Server $ echo 'get item hostids=10017'|./zabcon.rb itemid,description,key_ 18435,Ping to the server (TCP),agent.ping 18436,Version of zabbix_agent(d) running,agent.version 18438,Maximum number of opened files,kernel.maxfiles 18439,Maximum number of processes,kernel.maxproc … ...

29. Using Zabbix API Zabbix API is based on JSON RPC 2.0

30. If you can send JSON in POST request, you can use Zabbix API Curl is an easy way to test.

31. Let's go to the demo!

32. Using Zabbix API //get auth id $ curl -d '{"auth":null,"method":"user.authenticate","id":1,"params":{"password":"zabbix","user":"api_user"},"jsonrpc":"2.0"}' -H "Content-Type: application/json-rpc" http://localhost/zabbix185/api_jsonrpc.php //get item in "Zabbix Server" $ curl -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"item.get","params":{"output":"shorten","host":"Zabbix Server","limit":0},"auth":"PUT_HERE_AUTH_ID","id":1}' -H "Content-Type: application/json-rpc" http://localhost/zabbix185/api_jsonrpc.php

33. Zabbix API libraries Writing JSON directly and setting auth id every time is a pain.

34. There are Zabbix API libraries for php, ruby, python and perl. PHP: http://andrewfarley.com/php/zabbix-1-8-api-php-class-v1-0

35. Ruby: http://trac.red-tux.net/wiki/zbx_api

36. Python: https://github.com/gescheit/scripts/tree/master/zabbix/

37. Perl: https://github.com/mikeda/ZabbixAPI

38. Zabbix API libraries: it is easy to make tools Getting item description list by server name #!/usr/bin/env python from zabbix_api import ZabbixAPI import sys server=sys.argv[1] username=sys.argv[2] password=sys.argv[3] host_name=sys.argv[4] zapi = ZabbixAPI(server=server) zapi.login(username, password) hostid = zapi.host.get({"filter":{"host":host_name}})[0]["hostid"] items = zapi.item.get({ 'hostids' : (hostid), 'output' : 'extend'}) for i in items: print i['description']

39. Zabbix web interface is also using Zabbix API internally Internally, Zabbix web interface is also using Zabbix API functions.

40. Zabbix web interface access functions without JSON, but directly access same functions.

41. If Zabbix web frontend is installed, we can use it by including 'include/config.inc.php' .

42. Zabbix web interface is also using Zabbix API internally Sample code http://localhost/zabbix185/test.php <?php require_once('include/config.inc.php'); $params = array( 'host' => &quot;Zabbix Server&quot;, 'output' => API_OUTPUT_EXTEND, 'limit' => 0 ); $items = CItem::get($params); foreach ($items as $i){ print $i['description'] . &quot;<br>&quot;; } ?>

43. Other useful way to interface with Zabbix

44. Other useful way to interface with Zabbix Programs can use Zabbix API for controlling Zabbix.

45. If we want to send or get data to Zabbix, we can use other Zabbix protocols. Zabbix get protocol

46. Zabbix Sender protocol

47. Zabbix Agent (Active) protocol

48. Zabbix get protocol Just sending character data to 10050 port $ telnet localhost 10050 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. agent.version ZBXD1.8.2Connection closed by foreign host.

49. Zabbix get protocol Data is returned with header “ZBXD\1” and the following data length.

50. Zabbix get protocol It's so easy a protocol! we can write zabbix_get even by bash. https://github.com/BlueSkyDetector/code-snippet/blob/master/bash-zabbix-tools/zabbix_get.sh &quot; top &quot; by zabbix (demo) https://github.com/BlueSkyDetector/code-snippet/blob/master/bash-zabbix-tools/zabbix_top.sh

51. Zabbix sender protocol Zabbix Agent(Active) protocol data format is JSON with header.

52. Zabbix sender protocol Zabbix Agent(Active) protocol JSON data format (send data) { &quot;data&quot;: [ { &quot;host&quot;:&quot;HostA&quot;, &quot;value&quot;:&quot;sent data&quot;, &quot;key&quot;:&quot;AppX_Logger&quot; } ], &quot;request&quot;:&quot;sender data&quot; <--- or“agent data” }

53. Zabbix sender protocol Zabbix Agent(Active) protocol JSON data format (receive data) { &quot;response&quot;:&quot;success&quot;, &quot;info&quot;:&quot;Processed 2 Failed 0 Total 2 Seconds spent 0.000103&quot; }

54. Zabbix sender protocol Zabbix Agent(Active) protocol If you impliment Zabbix sender protocol, the program directly sends data to Zabbix without Zabbix Agent or Zabbix Sender

55. Zabbix Sender library for Python (demo) https://github.com/BlueSkyDetector/code-snippet/tree/master/ZabbixSender from ZabbixSender import ZabbixSender sender = ZabbixSender(u'127.0.0.1') sender.AddData(u'HostA', u'AppX_Logger', u'data1') sender.AddData(u'HostA', u'AppX_Logger', u'data2') result=sender.Send() sender.ClearData()

56. Zabbix is user friendly. Using Zabbix API and Zabbix protocols, it also become program-friendly software.

57. Questions

58. Thank you The original artwork by orngjce223 is distributed under CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/)