Interfacing with Infoblox WAPI using Python

Infoblox develops some really nice products for automating and managing your network infrastructure services such as DNS, DHCP, IP Address Management (IPAM) and others.

In this post we will see how we can interface with the Infoblox WAPI using Python in order to get, create, update and delete objects from an Infoblox instance.

Most of the examples on the Infoblox WAPI documentation page are Perl related, so in this post we will see how to use Python in order to interface with the Infoblox WAPI.

Fore more information about Infoblox and their products, please refer to the official Infoblox web site.

Requirements

Python 2.7.x or 3.x
requests library

Getting started

Most of the examples you will see in this post were executed in Python interactive mode. At the end of this post you will also find a CLI application which is able to get, create, delete and update Infoblox objects. For now let’s see how this is done step-by-step.

Now, let’s get started, shall we?

$ python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Jan  2 2013, 13:56:14) 
[GCC 4.7.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Import the requests module:

>>> import requests

Now, let’s create a requests.Session object which we will use for all our requests to the Infoblox WAPI.

>>> session = requests.Session()
>>> session.auth = ('admin', 'password)
>>> session.verify = False

If your Infoblox instance is using a self-signed SSL certificate you would want to set session.verify to False, otherwise your requests will fail. If your Infoblox instance is using a signed certificate from an official CA you can skip setting the session.verify attribute.

Let’s also set the URL to the Infoblox WAPI, which is where our requests will be send to:

>>> url = 'https://infoblox.example.org/wapi/v1.1/'

Okay, now we are ready to start sending our WAPI requests to the Infoblox instance. In the next sections of this post we will see how to get, create, update and delete objects from Infoblox.

Getting objects from Infoblox

In order to get Infoblox objects we need to use the HTTP GET method. This is how we could get all Infoblox network objects.

>>> r = session.get(url + 'network')

Let’s check if our request was successful or not:

>>> r.status_code
200

The HTTP code 200 means that our request was successful, so we could now see what the result was as well:

>>> print r.content
[
    {
        "_ref": "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTAuMjMuOTYuMC8yNC8w:192.168.0.0/24/default", 
        "network": "192.168.0.0/24", 
        "network_view": "default"
    }, 
    {
        "_ref": "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTAuMjMuMTA4LjAvMjQvMA:192.168.1.0/24/default", 
        "network": "192.168.1.0/24", 
        "network_view": "default"
    }
]

From the output above you can see the networks we have in Infoblox, the network view and also the object reference for each network object. The object reference in the output above is what we need to pass when we need to update or delete an Infoblox object. Later in this post we will see how to do that as well.

Creating objects in Infoblox

In order to create a new Infoblox object you need to use the HTTP POST method. This is how we could create a new Infoblox network:

>>> data = { 'network': '192.168.2.0/24', 'comment': 'A new Infoblox network' }
>>> r = session.post(url + 'network', data=data)

Let’s check if the request was successful.

>>> r.status_code
201

The HTTP code 201 means that we have successfully created a new Infoblox object.

Let’s check what was the result from our call as well:

>>> print r.content
"network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTkyLjE2OC4yLjAvMjQvMA:192.168.2.0/24/default"

Upon a successful object creation in Infoblox the result we will receive is the new object’s reference. In the above output you can see the object reference of our new network 192.168.2.0/24. Let’s verify that it actually exists in Infoblox.

>>> r = session.get(url + 'network')
>>> print r.content
[
    {
        "_ref": "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTAuMjMuOTYuMC8yNC8w:192.168.0.0/24/default", 
        "network": "192.168.0.0/24", 
        "network_view": "default"
    }, 
    {
        "_ref": "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTAuMjMuMTA4LjAvMjQvMA:192.168.1.0/24/default", 
        "network": "192.168.1.0/24", 
        "network_view": "default"
    }, 
    {
        "_ref": "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTkyLjE2OC4yLjAvMjQvMA:192.168.2.0/24/default", 
        "comment": "A new Infoblox network", 
        "network": "192.168.2.0/24", 
        "network_view": "default"
    }
]

As we can see from the output above we can now also see our newly created Infoblox network.

Updating objects in Infoblox

In order to update an object in Infoblox we need to use the HTTP PUT method. When updating an object in Infoblox we need to pass the object reference as well.

This is how we could update the example network object we recently created in the previous section:

>>> ref = "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTkyLjE2OC4yLjAvMjQvMA:192.168.2.0/24/default"
>>> data = { 'comment': 'This is a new comment' }
>>> r = session.put(url + ref, data=data)

Let’s check if the request was successful:

>>> r.status_code
200

The HTTP code 200 means that we have successfully updated the object in Infoblox.

If we check the result message from our request we would see that the Infoblox WAPI returns to us the object reference we have just updated:

>>> r.content
'"network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTkyLjE2OC4yLjAvMjQvMA:192.168.2.0/24/default"'

Let’s also check if our network has been successfully updated:

>>> print session.get(url + 'network').content
[
    {
        "_ref": "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTAuMjMuOTYuMC8yNC8w:192.168.0.0/24/default", 
        "network": "192.168.0.0/24", 
        "network_view": "default"
    }, 
    {
        "_ref": "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTAuMjMuMTA4LjAvMjQvMA:192.168.1.0/24/default", 
        "network": "192.168.1.0/24", 
        "network_view": "default"
    }, 
    {
        "_ref": "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTkyLjE2OC4yLjAvMjQvMA:192.168.2.0/24/default", 
        "comment": "This is a new comment", 
        "network": "192.168.2.0/24", 
        "network_view": "default"
    }
]

As you can see from the output above we have successfully updated our network object.

Removing objects from Infoblox

In order to remove an object from Infoblox we need to use the HTTP DELETE method. When removing an object from Infoblox we need to pass the object reference as well.

This is how we could remove the example network object we recently created in the previous section:

>>> ref = "network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTkyLjE2OC4yLjAvMjQvMA:192.168.2.0/24/default"
>>> r = session.delete(url + ref)

Let’s check if the request was successful:

>>> r.status_code
200

The HTTP code 200 means that we have successfully removed the object from Infoblox.

If we check the result message from our request we would see that the Infoblox WAPI returns to us the object reference we have just removed:

>>> r.content
'"network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTkyLjE2OC4yLjAvMjQvMA:192.168.2.0/24/default"'

Wrapping it up

By now you should know how to get, create, update and delete objects from an Infoblox instance. Running commands in the Python interactive mode is useful when testing, learning something new or just debugging an issue, but generally you would want all of the above to be handled by some tool.

For that purpose I’ve made a Python script which is able to get, create, update and remove objects from Infoblox server, which you can find at the Github repository listed below.

Github repository of py-infoblox

Grab the repository from Github by executing the command below:

$ git clone https://github.com/dnaeon/py-infoblox.git

Install the module and the CLI application:

$ python setup.py install

Create a config file describing the various Infoblox config entries. Below is an example configuration file:

[Default]
wapi      = https://infoblox.example.org/wapi/v1.1/
username  = admin
password  = password
sslverify = False

Now you can use the infoblox-cli application in order to get, create, update and remove objects from an Infoblox instance.

Example command to get the Infoblox network objects:

$ infoblox-cli -f infoblox.conf -t network get

Example command to create a new Infoblox object:

$ infoblox-cli -f infoblox.conf -t network -d '{ "network": "192.168.2.0/24", "comment": "Test network" }' create

Example command to update an Infoblox object:

$ infoblox-cli -f infoblox.conf -r network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTkyLjE2OC4yLjAvMjQvMA:192.168.2.0/24/default -d '{ "comment": "The new test network" }' update

Example command to remove an Infoblox object:

$ infoblox-cli -f infoblox.conf -r network/ZG5zLm5ldHdvcmskMTkyLjE2OC4yLjAvMjQvMA:192.168.2.0/24/default remove

Written on January 27, 2014