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Change a dashboard owner through the REST API

Dashboards are owned by the logged in user that created them. If a user is no longer with your company, you might need to change the owner of the dashboard to maintain that dashboard.

To transfer ownership of a dashboard, you need the dashboard ID and the username of the dashboard owner. You can only view the username of the owner of a dashboard through the REST API.

Before you begin

  • You must log in to the ExtraHop system with an account that has unlimited privileges to generate an API key.
  • You must have a valid API key to make changes through the REST API and complete the procedures below. (See Generate an API key.)
  • Familiarize yourself with the ExtraHop REST API Guide to learn how to navigate the ExtraHop REST API Explorer.

Retrieve the dashboard IDs

  1. In a browser, navigate to the REST API Explorer.
    The URL is the hostname or IP address of your ExtraHop Discover or Command appliance, followed by /api/v1/explore/. For example, if your hostname is seattle-eda, the URL is https://seattle-eda/api/v1/explore/.
  2. Click Enter API Key and then paste or type your API key into the API Key field.
  3. Click Authorize and then click Close.
  4. Click Dashboard to display dashboard operations.
  5. Click GET /dashboards.
  6. Click Try it out and then click Send Request to send the request to your appliance.
  7. Search for the dashboards by the dashboard name or by the user account listed in the "owner" field. If your list of dashboards is long, you can press control-F and search the response body.
    For our example, we want to change the "LDAP Server Health" dashboard created by the user account for "marksmith":
    {
    "id": 1876,
    "comment": null,
    "mod_time": 1507576983922,
    "author": "Mark Smith",
    "name": "LDAP Server Health",
    "owner": "marksmith",
    "built-in": false,
    "short_code": "MpXgk",
    "rights": [
      "transfer",
      "view",
      "edit",
      "share",
      "delete"
    ]
}
  8. Note the number in the "id" field for each dashboard you want to modify.

Change the dashboard owner

  1. Scroll down the page of Dashboard operations to the /dashboards/{id} section.
  2. Click PATCH /dashboards/{id}.
  3. Click Try it out.
    The JSON schema is automatically added to the body parameter text box.
  4. In the body text box, in the "owner" field, replace string with the username of the new owner.
  5. In the id field, type the number you previously noted for the dashboard.
    For our example, this value is 1876. (You can only modify one dashboard at a time through the REST API Explorer.)
    In the following figure, we added the JSON "string" for the "owner" parameter to the body parameter text box, changed "string" to "paulanderson", and typed "1876" in the id field.
  6. Click Send Request to send the request to your appliance.
    Under Server response, the Code column displays 204 if the operation is successful. You can click GET /dashboards again to verify that the "owner" field has changed. Note that you can only change the dashboard owner. You cannot change the dashboard name or author fields through the REST API.

    The dashboard is now available under My Dashboards in the ExtraHop Web UI for the new user. As the new owner, you can now log in to your ExtraHop system and change other dashboard properties, such as the dashboard name or author.

Tip:After you click Send Request, the REST API Explorer provides scripts for the operation in Curl, Python 2.7, or Ruby.

Python script example

The following example script searches for all dashboards owned by the user account marksmith on an ExtraHop appliance with the hostname extrahop.example.com and then changes the owner for all of those dashboards to the user account paulanderson.

#!/usr/bin/python3

import http.client
import json

HOST = 'extrahop.example.com'
APIKEY = '123456789abcdefghijklmnop'

headers = {'Accept': 'application/json',
           'Authorization': 'ExtraHop apikey=%s' % APIKEY}
conn = http.client.HTTPSConnection(HOST)
conn.request('GET', '/api/v1/dashboards', headers=headers)
resp = conn.getresponse()
parsed_resp = json.loads(resp.read())

for dashboard in parsed_resp:
    if dashboard['owner'] == 'marksmith':
        print('Dashboard {id} owned by marksmith.'
              ' Switching ownership...'.format(id=dashboard['id']))
        config = {'owner': 'paulanderson'}
        conn.request('PATCH', '/api/v1/dashboards/{id}'.format(
                id=dashboard['id']), json.dumps(config), headers=headers)
        resp = conn.getresponse()
        resp.read()
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 ExtraHop system. Alternatively, you can add the context option and send the request over TLSv1.2 to 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 2022-06-21