11.3. No Icinga-API to install anymore
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## 11.3. No Icinga-API to install anymore

| Important

In the days leading up to the v1.5 release, we bid our Icinga-API goodbye and ushered in a new API and Web concept.

You may ask yourself, what was this API anyway? Indeed, if you weren’t developing or adapting extensions for the new web interface, you wouldn’t have had much contact with this important project component. When Icinga was conceived, one of the main missions was to facilitate the development of addons and plugins. The API provided a set of commonly used request operations, removing the need to write sql-queries and generally a lot of excess code.

All was well until we decided to offer some extra database flexibility. When we added support for Oracle and PostgreSQL on top of MySQL, we also gave our Icinga-API team some extra work. With each change, bug fix or new feature, Marius, Michael L and Jannis had to edit the queries for each database back-end separately. This process was not only complicated and error-prone, but also a sign that we needed a more flexible architecture.

As of Icinga 1.5, the external Icinga-API was replaced by an internal database layer Doctrine, and merged into Icinga-Web. Much like before, queries will run through this layer between the database (IDOUtils) and the web interface. However, with Doctrine we can use several database back-ends and querying the database is now much easier. In contrast to SQL, its object relational mapper (ORM) uses Doctrine Query Language, so we now have the flexibility minus the code duplication.

That being said, queries from the old API still exist, thanks to the ‘legacy layer’ which will transform old API queries into this new ORM type. In this way, we maintain compatibility with addons designed for older Icinga versions. The Rest API is also still there as part of Icinga-Web, extending on our Doctrine layer with HTTP for addons that require only certain bits of monitoring info.

With the departure of a standalone API, the average Icinga user will barely notice a change, apart from the fact that the configuration has now been moved to the `databases.xml`. Best of all, every module developer can now easily access the Icinga database without much code overhead– so addon developers get hacking and let us know how you go!

For more information see our Wiki:

- Development Guide for Icinga-Web

- Icinga Database Essentials

- Icinga-Web REST API

| Important
The following is deprecated and only kept for reference

### 11.3.1. Installation and use of the Icinga API

- Prerequisites

  You need Icinga Core and IDOUtils or MKLiveStatus installed and running in order to use the API.

  | Note
  If you don't have Icinga yet please follow the instructions given in the "quickstart-idoutils" documentation.

  If you are using IDOUtils database as data source, install PHP-PDO.

  - RHEL/Fedora/CentOS

    Make sure you have a repository/packages for PHP 5.2.x - RHEL/CentOS only support 5.1.6 out of the box.

         # yum install php-pdo php-mysql|pgsql

  - Debian/Ubuntu

         # apt-get install php5 php5-mysql|pgsql

  - openSuSE

    Please use yast to install the packages php5, php5-pdo, and php5-mysql|php5-pgsql.

- Installation and Configuration

  | Note
  Icinga-API is already included in the package with Core, IDOUtils and docs and also installed during 'make install'. If you already installed this package, there's no need to install Icinga-API. It is located by default in /usr/local/icinga/share/icinga-api/ and you can skip this section!

  | Note
  If you just require Icinga-API for Icinga-Web, and already installed the Core with IDOUtils, skip this Howto and refer directly to installing Icinga Web.

  1. Download

     Take your clone from the icinga-api.git to get a fresh branch

          # git clone git://git.icinga.org/icinga-api.git

     or if you just need an update:

          # cd icinga-api && git pull origin master

     or download the software using https://git.icinga.org/index?p=icinga-api.git;a=snapshot;h=refs/heads/master;sf=tgz.

  2. Installation

     Unpack Icinga-API run configure and install it.

          # tar xzvf icinga-api-(version).tar.gz
          # ./configure

     You can set the prefix where it will be installed, and point Icinga-API where your Icinga and IDOUtils config is located and which users are required to run (those settings are directly applied when installing the API through Icinga Core Installation).

          # ./configure --datarootdir=/usr/local/icinga/share \
            --sysconfdir=/usr/local/icinga/etc \
            --with-command-user=icinga-cmd \
            --with-command-group=icinga-cmd \
            --with-icinga-user=icinga \
            --with-icinga-group=icinga \
            --with-web-user=www-data \
            --with-web-group=www-data

     | Note
     The --with-web... directives have to be set. Otherwise the web logs will not be written correctly. This may also lead to an empty main cronk. Please note that the values of user and group differ across distributions.

          # make install

- Configuration

  If you are developing you own Addon based on the Icinga-API, you need the following associative array.

       $idoConfig = array (
          'type'         => '<Type of database>',
          'host'         => '<Database hostname>',
          'database'     => '<Databasename>',
          'user'         => '<Username>',
          'password'     => '<password>',
          'persistent'   => <true | false>,
          'table_prefix' => '<table prefix>',
       );

  Example:

       $idoConfig = array (
          'type'         => 'mysql',
          'host'         => 'localhost',
          'database'     => 'ido',
          'user'         => 'idouser',
          'password'     => 'idopassword',
          'persistent'   => true,
          'table_prefix' => 'icinga_',
       );

- Supported Backends

  Currently the following backend types are available. More information about that can be found in doc/icinga-api-types.txt.

  - IDOUtils DB - OK

  - Livestatus Module - experimental, not for productive usage

  - Filebased, status.dat - experimental, not for productive usage

- Use of the API

  Examples can be found in doc/examples

  1. Fetching data

     hostnames and corresponding states

     Create an instance of class IcingaApi:

          $api = IcingaApi::getConnection(IcingaApi::CONNECTION_IDO, $idoConfig);

     Create your search:

          $apiRes = $api->createSearch()
          ->setSearchTarget(IcingaApi::TARGET_HOST)
          ->setResultColumns(array(’HOST_NAME’, ‘HOST_CURRENT_STATE’))
          ->fetch();

     By using setSearchFilter() you can define filters to narrow down the result set:

          $apiRes = $api->createSearch()
          ->setSearchTarget(IcingaApi::TARGET_HOST)
          ->setResultColumns(array(’HOST_NAME’, ‘HOST_CURRENT_STATE’))
          ->setSearchFilter(HOST_NAME, ‘Switch%’, IcingaApi::MATCH_LIKE)
          ->fetch();

  2. Processing results

          foreach($apiRes as $apiHandle){
             echo ‘Host ‘.$apiHandle->HOST_NAME.’ has state ‘.$apiHandle->HOST_CURRENT_STATE.’<br />’;
          }

     Output without filter:

          Host localhost has state 0
          Host MySql has state 0
          Host router-01 has state 0
          Host windows100 has state 0
          Host Apache_01 has state 0

     Output with filter:

          Host switch70 has the current state 0
          Host switch71 has the current state 0
          Host switch72 has the current state 0
          Host switch73 has the current state 0
          Host switch74 has the current state 0
          Host switch75 has the current state 0
          Host switch76 has the current state 0
          Host switch77 has the current state 0

  3. Complete code without use of filters

          <?
          // Path to icinga api file
          $apiFile = ‘icinga-api/IcingaApi.php’;

          // Database connection
          $idoConfig = array (
             'type'         => 'mysql',
             'host'         => 'localhost',
             'database'     => 'ido',
             'user'         => 'idouser',
             'password'     => 'idopassword',
             'persistent'   => true,
             'table_prefix' => 'icinga_',
          );

          // Include required files
          require_once($apiFile);

          // Instance the class
          $api = IcingaApi::getConnection(IcingaApi::CONNECTION_IDO, $idoConfig);

          // Create search
          $apiRes = $api->createSearch()
          ->setSearchTarget(IcingaApi::TARGET_HOST)
          ->setResultColumns(array('HOST_NAME', 'HOST_CURRENT_STATE'))
          ->fetch();

          // Create output
          foreach($apiRes as $apiHandle){
             echo 'Host '.$apiHandle->HOST_NAME.' has the current state '.$apiHandle->HOST_CURRENT_STATE.'<br />';
          }
          ?>

     Please have a look at the git repository for further information or consult the examples in the doc/examples folder.

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