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Extract the device list through the REST API

The ExtraHop REST API enables you to extract the list of devices discovered by a Discover appliance. By extracting the list with a REST API script, you can export the list in a format that can be read by third-party applications, such as a configuration management database (CMDB). In this topic, we show methods for extracting a list through both the cURL command and a Python script.

Before you begin

  • You must log into the Discover appliance with an account that has full write privileges to generate an API key.
  • You must have a valid API key to retrieve devices through the REST API and complete the procedures below. (See Generate an API key.)

Retrieve the device list with the cURL command

The device list includes all device metadata, such as MAC addresses and device IDs. However, you can filter the list of devices with a JSON parser to extract the specific information you want to export. In this example, the device list is retrieved and then filtered with the jq parser to only extract the display name of each device.

Before you begin

  • The cURL tool must be installed on your machine.
  • The jq parser must be installed on your machine. For more information, see https://stedolan.github.io/jq/.
Open a terminal application and run the following command, where YOUR_KEY is the API for your user account, HOSTNAME is the hostname of your Discover appliance, and MAX_DEVICES is a number large enough to be more than the total number of devices discovered by your appliance: 
curl -s -k -X GET --header "Accept: application/json" --header "Authorization: ExtraHop apikey=YOUR_KEY"  "https://HOSTNAME/api/v1/devices?active_from=1&active_until=0&limit=MAX_DEVICES" | jq -r '.[] | .display_name'
Note:If the command returns no results, make sure that a trusted certificate has been added to your appliance. Alternatively, you can add the --insecure option to retrieve the device list from an appliance without a trusted certificate; however, this method is not secure and is not recommended.
Tip:You can append the select(.analysis == "LEVEL") option to filter results by analysis level. For example, the following command limits the results to include only devices that are selected for advanced analysis:
curl -s -X GET --header "Accept: application/json" --header "Authorization: ExtraHop apikey=ac09e68cf6b5499697fe93d3930e41ed"  "https://example.extrahop.com/api/v1/devices?active_from=1&active_until=0&limit=10000000000"  | jq -r '.[] | select(.analysis == "advanced") | .display_name'

Python script example

The following example Python script extracts the device list, including all device metadata, and writes the list to a CSV file in the same directory as the script. The script includes the following configuration variables that you must replace with information from your environment:

HOST: The IP address or hostname of the Discover appliance

APIKEY: The API key

FILENAME: The file that output will be written to

LIMIT: The maximum number of devices to retrieve with each GET request

SAVEL2: Determines whether L2 devices are included

ADVANCED_ONLY: Determines whether to retrieve only devices that are currently under advanced analysis 

#!/usr/bin/env python2

import httplib
import json
import unicodecsv as csv
import datetime

HOST = 'example.extrahop.com'
APIKEY = 'f6876657888a7c1f24ac77827'
FILENAME = 'devices.csv'
LIMIT = 1000
SAVEL2 = False
ADVANCED_ONLY = False

headers = {}
headers['Accept'] = 'application/json'
headers['Authorization'] = 'ExtraHop apikey='+APIKEY

def getDevices(offset):
    conn = httplib.HTTPSConnection(HOST)
    conn.request('GET', '/api/v1/devices?limit=%d&offset=%d&search_type=any'%(LIMIT,offset), headers=headers)
    resp = conn.getresponse()
    if resp.status == 200:
        devices = json.loads(resp.read())
        conn.close()
        return devices
    else:
        print "Error retrieving Device list"
        print resp.status, resp.reason
        resp.read()
        dTable = None
        conn.close()
        return devices

continue_search = True
offset = 0
dTable = []
while (continue_search):
    new_devices = getDevices(offset)
    offset += LIMIT
    dTable += new_devices
    if (len(new_devices) > 0):
        continue_search = True
    else:
        continue_search = False

if (dTable != None):
    print " - Saving %d devices in CSV file" % len(dTable)
    with open(FILENAME, 'w') as csvfile:
        csvwriter = csv.writer(csvfile,dialect='excel', encoding='utf-8')
        csvwriter.writerow(dTable[0].keys())
        w = 0
        s = 0
        for d in dTable:
            if ADVANCED_ONLY == False or (ADVANCED_ONLY == True and d['analysis'] == 'advanced'):
                if d['is_l3'] | SAVEL2:
                    w += 1
                    d['mod_time'] = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(d['mod_time']/1000.0)
                    d['user_mod_time'] = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(d['user_mod_time']/1000.0)
                    d['discover_time'] = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(d['discover_time']/1000.0)
                    csvwriter.writerow(d.values())
                else:
                    s += 1
            else:
                s += 1
        print " - Wrote %d devices, skipped %d devices " % (w,s)
Note:If the script returns an error message that the SSL certificate verification failed, make sure that a trusted certificate has been added to your appliance. Alternatively, you can add the context option to send the request over TLSv1.2 and bypass certificate verification; however, this method is not secure and is not recommended. The following code creates an HTTP connection over TLSv1.2:
conn = httplib.HTTPSConnection(HOST, context=ssl.SSLContext(ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1_2))
Published 2021-04-19 10:06