Title: Python SDK for AppDynamics REST API Author: Todd Radel
Affiliation: AppDynamics Inc. Email: tradel@appdynamics.com
Date: 26 August 2013

Python SDK for AppDynamics REST API

Purpose

AppDynamics provides a REST interface from which you can pull lots of useful data from your controller: metrics like average response time and calls per minute, as well as metadata like a list of all the detected business transactions. Mostly this involves making repeated HTTP calls to the controller, then parsing the results as XML or JSON.

I set out to create a simple Python library to hide most of the grunt work and complexity.

This library works with both on-premise and SaaS controllers.

Usage

Here's a simple example. It retrieves a list of business applications from the controller and prints them out. It uses a helper class appd.cmdline to let you supply the controller URL, username, password, and account on the command line.

from appd.cmdline import parse_argv
from appd.request import AppDynamicsClient

args = parse_argv()
c = AppDynamicsClient(args.url, args.username, args.password, args.account, args.verbose)
for app in c.get_applications():
	print app.name, app.id

Prerequisites

This package requires a couple of other modules:

• tzlocal
• requests
• lxml

If you use the setup script documented in the next section, you don't need to install these yourself. The script will check for the prerequisites and install them if they are missing.

Installation

The package includes the standard python setup.py, so you can install it with a simple command:

python setup.py install

Examples

The package includes a couple of scripts that demonstrate what you can do with the REST API:

• sample.py - retrieves a list of applications from the controller, then overall application metrics and prints them out.
• license_report_to_csv.py - generates a CSV report of licenses in use by license type (Java, .NET, PHP, and machine-agent-only) which can be imported into Excel.
• bt_metrics.py - generates an XML report of metrics by business transaction, similar to the standard data in the Business Transactions dashboard. There is an associated XML schema in xsd/bt_metrics.xsd.
• backend_metrics.py - generates an XML report of metrics for each discovered backend. There is an associated XML schema in xsd/backend_metrics.xsd.

To run the scripts, you need to pass the controller URL, username, and password on the command line. If you are on a multi-tenant controller or hosted on SaaS, you will also need to pass an account name. Here's an example:

python examples/bt_metrics.py --url http://appdyn-prod.local:8090 --username user1 --password welcome

For the full list of command line options supported, see the next section.

Command Line Options

This package includes a module called appd.cmdline that provides a simple command-line parser for use in your scripts. You're not required to use it, but it allows you to point your script at different controllers without making any code changes, and if you use it consistently, your scripts will all have a common command-line syntax, which is nice. It supports the following options:

• -c or --url for the controller URL. Required.
• -a or --account for the account name. Optional and defaults to "customer1", which is the account name on single-tenant controllers.
• -u or --username for the user name. Required.
• -p or --password for the password. Required.
• -v or --verbose will print out the URLs before they are retrieved.
• -h or --help will display a summary of the command line options.

The example scripts all use the parser, so you can look at their source to see how to use it.

FAQ

I get errors like ImportError: No module named appd.cmdline when I try to run the examples scripts.

You'll see this if you try to run the example scripts before installing the package into your Python site-packages folder. Either follow the installation instructions above, or set the PYTHONPATH environment variable before running the script, like this:

PYTHONPATH=. python examples/bt_metrics.py

I can't seem to get the authentication right. I keep getting HTTPError: 401 Client Error: Unauthorized.

Use the same username, password, and account you use when you log into your controller. If your login screen only has two fields in it (username and password), then you can omit the account.

To Do

• TODO: Add support for POST requests (mark node historical, code deployment event, etc.)

References

1. AppDynamics REST API page in the official documentation.