Use the API

Overview

All components that are using the full architecture of OPNsense automatically receive API capabilities, for this simple tutorial we use the firmware module but others will function in the same way. API access is part of the local user authentication system, but uses key/secret pairs to separate account information from machine to machine communication. Secrets are not stored on OPNsense and can be downloaded only once, if lost, a new key has to be generated for your application.

A user can have multiple keys, our advice is to create a unique key for every application in use.

Creating keys

API keys are managed in the user manager (system_usermanager.php), go to the user manager page and select a user. Somewhere down the page you will find the API section for this user.

Click on the + sign to add a new key. When the key is created, you will receive a (single download) with the credentials in one text file (ini formatted). The contents of this file look like this:

key=w86XNZob/8Oq8aC5r0kbNarNtdpoQU781fyoeaOBQsBwkXUt
secret=XeD26XVrJ5ilAc/EmglCRC+0j2e57tRsjHwFepOseySWLM53pJASeTA3

Code sample (python)

For the python code sample we use the nice “requests” library (http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/), which makes HTTP calls very easy.

Before you can start, make sure your OPNsense has a valid SSL certificate (or choose to ignore it for testing purposes by setting verify=False), don’t forget to verify that the selected user may access the firmware page.

The web interface uses the same logic that will be available for the api, in this example we will collect some status information from the firmware module and print it out for the user.

It all starts with creating the request and waiting for the response, all data interaction is using json format, both for the responses as for the request data (when sending POST data).

First step of the example is importing the required libraries, then define the endpoint url and credentials to use and finally fire the (get type) request. As soon as we receive the response, we parse the json string back to a dictionary and print some data depending on the response.

# import libraries
import json
import requests

# define endpoint and credentials
api_key = 'w86XNZob/8Oq8aC5hxh2he+vLN00r0kbNarNtdpoQU781fyoeaOBQsBwkXUt'
api_secret = 'puOyw0Ega3xZXeD26XVrJ5WYFepOseySWLM53pJASeTA3'
url = 'https://192.168.1.1/api/core/firmware/status'

# request data
r = requests.get(url,
                 verify='OPNsense.pem',
                 auth=(api_key, api_secret))

if r.status_code == 200:
    response = json.loads(r.text)

    if response['status'] == 'ok':
        print ('OPNsense can be upgraded')
        print ('download size : %s' % response['download_size'])
        print ('number of packages : %s' % response['updates'])
        if response['upgrade_needs_reboot'] == '1':
            print ('REBOOT REQUIRED')
    elif 'status_msg' in response:
        print (response['status_msg'])
else:
    print ('Connection / Authentication issue, response received:')
    print r.text

Using curl

Simple testing with curl is also possible, the sample below uses the same credentials, but ignores the SSL certificate check (-k) for testing.

curl -k -u "w86XNZob/8Oq8aC5hxh2he+vLN00r0kbNarNtdpoQU781fyoeaOBQsBwkXUt":"puOyw0Ega3xZXeD26XVrJ5WYFepOseySWLM53pJASeTA3" https://192.168.1.1/api/core/firmware/status

And schedule the actual update of all packages using:

curl -XPOST -k -u "w86XNZob/8Oq8aC5hxh2he+vLN00r0kbNarNtdpoQU781fyoeaOBQsBwkXUt":"puOyw0Ega3xZXeD26XVrJ5WYFepOseySWLM53pJASeTA3" https://10.211.55.100/api/core/firmware/update