Proxmox VE API
Introduction
Proxmox VE uses a REST like API. The concept is described in [1] (Resource Oriented Architectur - ROA).
We choose JSON as primary data format, and the whole API is formally defined using JSON Schema [2].
You can explore the API documentation at http://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/api-viewer/index.html
JSON and JSON Schema
The API use JSON as data format, because it is simple and parse-able by any web browser.
Additionally, we use JSON Schema [2] to formally describe our API. So we can automatically generate the whole API Documentation, and we can verify all parameters and return values.
An great side effect was that we are able to use JSON Schema to produce command line argument parsers automatically. In fact, the REST API and the command line tools use the same code. A small utility called 'pvesh' exposes the whole REST API on the command line.
So here is a summary of the advantage:
- easy, human-readable data format (native web browser format)
- automatic parameter verification (we can also verify return values)
- automatic generation of API documentation
- easy way to create command line tools (use the same API)
API Stability & Breakage
Proxmox VE tries to stay API compatible in a major release. For example, an API call that worked with 6.0 should also work with 6.4 but has no guarantee to do so with 7.0.
A breaking change is defined as:
- Removing an API endpoint entirely
- Moving an API endpoint to a new path. Normally we add the new one already and move the legacy option on the next major version bump.
- Removing parameters from an API endpoint
- Changing the return type from a non-null type to another type
The following examples are not considered as breaking change:
- Changing an endpoint's return type from
nullto anything else is not considered as breaking change - Adding new parameters
- Adding new properties to returned objects
- Slight semantic changes, as this is often a requirement for a bugfix, albeit we either try
- to guard those under opt-in parameters
- to mirror the Linux Kernel "never break user-space" principle. I.e., we break it as long as deemed small enough and useful, but we are open for addressing complaints by actual users and find a solution, or switch the behavior back to the previous one.
- Adding new API endpoints
API URL
The API uses the HTTPS protocol and the server listens to port 8006. So the base URL for that API is
https://your.server:8006/api2/json/
Parameters can be passed using standard HTTP techniques:
- via the URL
- using 'x-www-form-urlencoded' content-type for PUT and POST request.
It is possible specify the return format in the URL. Above example uses 'json', but you can use any of the following values:
- json: JSON
- extjs: JSON variant compatible with ExtJS forms
- html: html formatted text - sometimes useful for debugging
- text: plain text - sometimes useful for debugging
Please contact use on the development mailing list if you need other data formats.
Authentication
Proxmox VE uses a ticket or token based authentication, all request to the API need to include a ticket inside a Cookie (header) or sending an API token through the Authorization header.
Ticket Cookie
A ticket is a signed random text value with the user and creation time included. Tickets are signed by the cluster-wide authentication key that is rotated once per day.
Additionally, any write (POST/PUT/DELETE) request must include a CSRF prevention token inside the HTTP header. The following examples use the curl command line tool.
Example: Get a New Ticket and the CSRF Prevention Token
Request:
curl -k -d "username=root@pam&password=yourpassword" https://10.0.0.1:8006/api2/json/access/ticket
Example Response
{
"data": {
"CSRFPreventionToken":"4EEC61E2:lwk7od06fa1+DcPUwBTXCcndyAY",
"ticket":"PVE:root@pam:4EEC61E2::rsKoApxDTLYPn6H3NNT6iP2mv...",
"username":"root@pam"
}
}
NOTE: Tickets have a limited lifetime of 2 hours.
But you can simply get a new ticket by passing the old ticket as password to the /access/ticket method before its lifetime expired.
Example: Use the New Ticket
You need to pass the returned ticket with a cookie to any further request:
curl -k -b "PVEAuthCookie=PVE:root@pam:4EEC61E2::rsKoApxDTLYPn6H3NNT6iP2mv..." https://10.0.0.1:8006/api2/json/
Response:
{
"data": [
{ "subdir": "version" },
{ "subdir": "cluster" },
{ "subdir": "nodes" },
{ "subdir": "storage" },
{ "subdir": "access" },
{ "subdir": "pools" }
]
}
Example: Ticket & CSRF for PUT, POST, DELETE
Additionally, any write request (POST, PUT, DELETE) must include the CSRFPreventionToken header:
curl -XDELETE -H "CSRFPreventionToken: 4EEC61E2:lwk7od06fa1+DcPUwBTXCcndyAY" ...
API Tokens
API tokens allow stateless access to most parts of the REST API by another system, software or API client. Tokens can be generated for individual users and can be given separate permissions and expiration dates to limit the scope and duration of the access. Should the API token get compromised it can be revoked without disabling the user itself.
To use an API token, set the HTTP Authorization header to the a value of the form PVEAPIToken=USER@REALM!TOKENID=UUID when making API requests, or refer to your API client documentation.
Example: Use API Token
curl -H "Authorization: PVEAPIToken=root@pam!monitoring=69ab8098-f2aa-455c-add3-e387aef0a47e" https://10.0.0.1:8006/api2/json/
Note: API tokens do not need CSRF values for POST, PUT or DELETE. Tokens are normally not used in a browser context, so the main attack vector of CSRF is not applicable in the first place.
Step by step example of LXC creation using the API
assumptions:
- the node where we login is called APINODE
- the node on which is the container will be created is called TARGETNODE
- the auth cookie will be placed in the file "cookie"
- the CSRF token will be placed in the file "csrftoken"
Note: for ease of use we use the jq(1) package which parses and pretty prints json data
export variables
export APINODE=pve4 export TARGETNODE=pve4
Save an authorization cookie on the hard drive
curl --silent --insecure --data "username=root@pam&password=yourpassword" \ https://$APINODE:8006/api2/json/access/ticket\ | jq --raw-output '.data.ticket' | sed 's/^/PVEAuthCookie=/' > cookie
Save a CSRF token locally
curl --silent --insecure --data "username=root@pam&password=yourpassword" \ https://$APINODE:8006/api2/json/access/ticket \ | jq --raw-output '.data.CSRFPreventionToken' | sed 's/^/CSRFPreventionToken:/' > csrftoken
Test auth credentials
We display the target node status
curl --insecure --cookie "$(<cookie)" https://$APINODE:8006/api2/json/nodes/$TARGETNODE/status | jq '.'
creates an lxc container (with the given parameters)
Note: we need to encode the HTTP POST body when passing non alphanumeric parameters
curl --silent --insecure --cookie "$(<cookie)" --header "$(<csrftoken)" -X POST\ --data-urlencode net0="name=myct0,bridge=vmbr0" \ --data-urlencode ostemplate="local:vztmpl/debian-8.0-standard_8.0-1_amd64.tar.gz" \ --data vmid=601\ https://$APINODE:8006/api2/json/nodes/$TARGETNODE/lxc
This should return a json structure containing the task id of the creation process which looks like:
{
"data": "UPID:pve4:00002F9D:000DC5EA:57500527:vzcreate:602:root@pam:"
}
Make sure you use an available vmid when creating a container.
Using 'pvesh' to access the API
As mentioned above, there is a command line tool called 'pvesh' which exposes the whole REST API. This is the Swiss Army knife for developers and system administrators.
some example commands:
pvesh get /version pvesh get /access/users
or create a new user:
pvesh create /access/users -userid testuser@pve
or delete that user:
pvesh delete /access/users/testuser@pve
or create and then launch a new container:
pvesh create /nodes/{node}/lxc -vmid 100 -hostname test -storage local \
-password supersecret \
-ostemplate local:vztmpl/debian-9.0-standard_9.5-1_amd64.tar.gz \
-memory 512 -swap 512
pvesh create /nodes/{node}/lxc/100/status/start
where {node} is the name of the node on which the container should be created.
The tool automatically proxies call to other cluster members using ssh.
Clients
Official Proxmox Maintained
Available in the Proxmox Repositories, via
apt-get install libpve-apiclient-perl
Community Maintained
- python
- https://pypi.python.org/pypi/proxmoxer (used in the ansible proxmox and proxmox_kvm modules)
- https://github.com/remofritzsche/proxmox-utils (Console Client)
- https://github.com/baseblack/Proxmoxia (Wrapper)
- https://github.com/pcdummy/pmxc (Console Client)
- c#
- https://github.com/ionelanton/ProxmoxSharp
- https://github.com/Corsinvest/cv4pve-api-dotnet
- https://github.com/Corsinvest/cv4pve-cli
- https://github.com/Corsinvest/cv4pve-botgram
- https://github.com/Corsinvest/cv4pve-pepper
- PHP
- https://github.com/CpuID/pve2-api-php-client
- https://github.com/ZzAntares/ProxmoxVE
- https://github.com/aheahe/pve-cli-utils
- https://github.com/Corsinvest/cv4pve-api-php
- https://github.com/MrKampf/proxmoxVE
- Go
- https://github.com/Telmate/proxmox-api-go
- https://github.com/Telmate/terraform-provider-proxmox (uses the Go API helper to provide Terraform integration)
Please add any other clients here as they become available.
References
[1] RESTful Web Services - Web services for the real world
By Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby, Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Released: May 2007
[2] JSON Schema links: http://json-schema.org/