Previous v3 SUSE® Rancher Prime API Guide

The previous v3 API has its own user interface accessible from a web browser. This is an easy way to see resources, perform actions, and see the equivalent curl or HTTP request & response. To access it:

API requests must include authentication information. Authentication is done with HTTP basic authentication using API keys. API keys can create new clusters and have access to multiple clusters via /v3/clusters/. Cluster and project roles apply to these keys and restrict what clusters and projects the account can see and what actions they can take.

By default, certain cluster-level API tokens are generated with infinite time-to-live (ttl=0). In other words, API tokens with ttl=0 never expire unless you invalidate them. For details on how to invalidate them, refer to the API tokens page.

The API is generally RESTful but has several features to make the definition of everything discoverable by a client so that generic clients can be written instead of having to write specific code for every type of resource. For detailed info about the generic API spec, see further documentation.

The design allows you to load just the list of schemas and access everything about the API. The UI for the API contains no code specific to Rancher itself. The URL to get Schemas is sent in every HTTP response as a X-Api-Schemas header. From there you can follow the collection link on each schema to know where to list resources, and follow other links inside of the returned resources to get any other information.

In practice, you may just want to construct URL strings. We highly suggest limiting this to the top-level to list a collection (/v3/<type>) or get a specific resource (/v3/<type>/<id>). Anything deeper than that is subject to change in future releases.

Resources have relationships between each other called links. Each resource includes a map of links with the name of the link and the URL where you can retrieve that information. Again, you should GET the resource and then follow the URL in the links map, not construct these strings yourself.

Most resources have actions, which do something or change the state of the resource. To use them, send a HTTP POST to the URL in the actions map of the action you want. Certain actions require input or produce output. See the individual documentation for each type or the schemas for specific information.

To edit a resource, send a HTTP PUT to the links.update link on the resource with the fields that you want to change. If the link is missing then you don’t have permission to update the resource. Unknown fields and ones that are not editable are ignored.

To delete a resource, send a HTTP DELETE to the links.remove link on the resource. If the link is missing then you don’t have permission to update the resource.

To create a new resource, HTTP POST to the collection URL in the schema (which is /v3/<type>).

Most collections can be filtered on the server-side by common fields using HTTP query parameters. The filters map shows you what fields can be filtered on and what the filtered values were for the request you made. The API UI has controls to setup filtering and show you the appropriate request. For simple "equals" matches it’s just field=value. Modifiers can be added to the field name, for example, field_gt=42 for "field is greater than 42." See the API spec for full details.

Most collections can be sorted on the server-side by common fields using HTTP query parameters. The sortLinks map shows you what sorts are available, along with the URL to get the collection sorted by that. It also includes info about what the current response was sorted by, if specified.

API responses are paginated with a limit of 100 resources per page by default. This can be changed with the limit query parameter, up to a maximum of 1000, for example, /v3/pods?limit=1000. The pagination map in collection responses tells you whether or not you have the full result set and has a link to the next page if you do not.

You can use browser developer tools to capture how the v3 API is called. For example, you could follow these steps to use the Chrome developer tools to get the API call for provisioning an RKE cluster: