API Commandline Tool

The API Commandline Tool (ACT) is a shell script wrapper around API calls towards an AppDynamics controller. It allows you to run common commands from your shell, integrate them with other shell commands and automate certain tasks.

ACT is completely bash based, so you don't need to install or compile anything, just download and run it!

If you want to see some examples what ACT can do, before installing it, look into the list of available commands and available recipes

As a byproduct the tool generates a postman compatible collection of API calls. The integration is described at POSTMAN.md

Installation

To use the latest release of ACT just download the raw version of act.sh

Afterwards run act.sh config to provide your controller host and credentials. This will create a configuration file at ~/.appdynamics/act/config.sh, e.g.:

CONFIG_CONTROLLER_HOST=https://appdynamics.example.com:8090
CONFIG_CONTROLLER_CREDENTIALS=me@customer1:secure2
CONFIG_CONTROLLER_COOKIE_LOCATION=/home/ubuntu/.appdynamics/act/cookie.txt

To update your configuration, you can either edit this file or you can re-run the setup:

act.sh config -f

If you want to work with multiple controllers, you can use environments

Usage

act.sh integrates different commands to interact with your AppDynamics controller. See USAGE.md for a full list of commands or call act.sh help from the command line.

A simple work flow example is listing, exporting and deleting a dashboard:

act.sh dashboard list
act.sh dashboard export 13
act.sh dashboard delete 13

Another example is getting a notification while your on premise controller is starting up. Combine act.sh with the notification tool of your choice (noti, terminal-notifier, ...) or run commands after the controller is running:

noti act.sh controller isup
act.sh controller isup | terminal-notifier
act.sh controller isup ; act.sh applications list

Also, you can use act.sh to easily create custom events, like code deployments:

act.sh event create -l INFO -c "This release fixes some minor issues with the mini cart functionality" -e APPLICATION_DEPLOYMENT -a 145 -s "Version 3.5.1 released"

For some activities, that require multiple API calls, there are combined commands, e.g. controller federation or copying health rules from one application to another

act.sh federation setup -h "http://anothercontroller" -c "admin:customer1@password"
act.sh healthrule copy -s 546 -t 1000

If a certain API call is not yet wrapped into a command, you can use controller call as general interface:

act.sh controller call /controller/rest/applications?output=JSON

Finally, you can find some more recipes on using ACT in RECIPES.md.

Postman Integration

If you prefer using a graphical user interface to interact with the API you can import all available commands and your environments into postman. Read the guide at POSTMAN.md to learn more.

Plugins

If you want to use custom plugins with act.sh you can place shell scripts into a plugin folder (default: ~/.appdynamics/act/plugins) and they will be sourced automatically. A command plugin requires the following structure:

#!/bin/bash
function namespace_command {
...
}
register namespace_command help text

To send a call to the AppDynamics controller you can use the apiCall helper, that allows you to easily create a subcommand:

function tier_nodes {
  apiCall -X GET "/controller/rest/applications/\${a}/tiers/\${t}/nodes" "$@"
}

The command act.sh tier nodes will now take two arguments (via -a and -t) and send the given request to the AppDynamics controller.

Since all other sub commands are loaded, you can reuse them in your plugin. Most importantly call_controller to send requests to the controller.

Please note, that your plugins will not be validated, so you can change global behaviour or break the script.

Build and Extend

ACT comes with a custom build system, that allows you to add additional commands and functionality easily. If you want to extend act.sh you can either add custom commands in the commands folder or you can describe them in the commands.yml file. By running build.sh all files in commands are merged into act.sh and all commands described in commands.yml are autogenerated and added to the same.

License

Copyright 2017 AppDynamics LLC

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.