[T&C] Use Postman for A10 aXAPI calls

tmitsuhatatmitsuhata Member, Administrator, A10ers admin
edited August 2023 in DevOps

Postman is well known test tool and very convenient when it comes to executing APIs. It provides not only variety of API functionality including authentication, setting headers, customizing the payload, but also collaboration functionality for the teams dealing with API projects.

This article explains how you can use Postman to interact with A10 Thunder using A10's RESTful API aXAPI.

Sample Postman collection and config file (JSON) for A10 aXAPI

Download, unzip and import the file on the Postman app, you will find A10 aXAPI collection which is consisting of a few aXAPI calls as well as the very 1st authorization request call.

Set Your Collection Variables

Go to the imported A10 aXAPI collection and Variables tab where you can find predefined variables (e.g., Thunder device IP(s), username and password). You can go ahead and update these values based on your environment.

Note: Leave the axapi_authkey blank and refer to next section.

Authorization

First, you must run the 1st - Authorize request to be authenticated using username and password. The aXAPI then returns data in JSON format including a token in the signature field. 

The 1st - Authorize call contains a test script under Tests tab that parses the returned token and set it as an collection variable axapi_authkey to be used in the succeeding aXAPI calls.

Note: In this sample, the axapi_authkey is defined as a collection variable. Please use appropriate variable scopes (e.g., global, environmental, local or else) per your needs.

Run aXAPI calls

Now, you're ready to play around with aXAPI calls. The sample collection includes the following three aXAPI calls for your reference.

  1. Get version info with /axapi/v3/version/oper
  2. Get interface info with /axapi/v3/interface/brief/oper
  3. Get SLB VIP status with /axapi/v3/slb/virtual-server/oper/

For more details of aXAPI and endpoints, refer to the aXAPI documentation.

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