Communications

All the communication are done over HTTP using JSON.

Errors

In case of error a standard HTTP error is raise and you got a JSON like that

{
    "status": 409,
    "message": "Conflict"
}

Sample session using curl

Warning

Beware the output of this sample is truncated in order to simplify the understanding. Please read the documentation for the exact output.

You can check the server version with a simple curl command:

# curl "http://localhost:3080/v1/version"
{
    "version": "2.0.0dev1"
}

The next step is to create a project.

# curl -X POST "http://localhost:3080/v1/projects" -d '{"name": "test"}'
{
    "name": "test",
    "path": null,
    "project_id": "994d95b6-7dd4-467b-898c-14cf34900b7b",
    "temporary": false
}

With this project id we can now create two VPCS Node.

# curl -X POST "http://localhost:3080/v1/projects/42f9feee-3217-4104-981e-85d5f0a806ec/vpcs/vms" -d '{"name": "VPCS 1"}'
{
    "console": 2000,
    "name": "VPCS 1",
    "project_id": "42f9feee-3217-4104-981e-85d5f0a806ec",
    "vm_id": "24d2e16b-fbef-4259-ae34-7bc21a41ee28"
}%

# curl -X POST "http://localhost:3080/v1/projects/42f9feee-3217-4104-981e-85d5f0a806ec/vpcs/vms" -d '{"name": "VPCS 2"}'
{
    "console": 2001,
    "name": "VPCS 2",
    "vm_id": "daefc24a-103c-4717-8e01-6517d931c1ae"
}

Now we need to link the two VPCS. The first step is to allocate on the remote servers two UDP ports.

# curl -X POST "http://localhost:3080/v1/projects/42f9feee-3217-4104-981e-85d5f0a806ec/ports/udp" -d '{}'
{
    "udp_port": 10000
}                                                                                  

# curl -X POST "http://localhost:3080/v1/projects/42f9feee-3217-4104-981e-85d5f0a806ec/ports/udp" -d '{}'
{
    "udp_port": 10001
}

We can create the bidirectionnal communication between the two VPCS. The communication is made by creating two UDP tunnels.

# curl -X POST "http://localhost:3080/v1/projects/42f9feee-3217-4104-981e-85d5f0a806ec/vpcs/vms/24d2e16b-fbef-4259-ae34-7bc21a41ee28/adapters/0/ports/0/nio" -d '{"lport": 10000, "rhost": "127.0.0.1", "rport": 10001, "type": "nio_udp"}'
{
    "lport": 10000,
    "rhost": "127.0.0.1",
    "rport": 10001,
    "type": "nio_udp"
}

# curl -X POST "http://localhost:3080/v1/projects/42f9feee-3217-4104-981e-85d5f0a806ec/vpcs/vms/daefc24a-103c-4717-8e01-6517d931c1ae/adapters/0/ports/0/nio" -d '{"lport": 10001, "rhost": "127.0.0.1", "rport": 10000, "type": "nio_udp"}'
{
    "lport": 10001,
    "rhost": "127.0.0.1",
    "rport": 10000,
    "type": "nio_udp"
}

Now we can start the two Node

# curl -X POST "http://localhost:3080/v1/projects/42f9feee-3217-4104-981e-85d5f0a806ec/vpcs/vms/24d2e16b-fbef-4259-ae34-7bc21a41ee28/start" -d "{}"
# curl -X POST "http://localhost:3080/v1/projects/42f9feee-3217-4104-981e-85d5f0a806ec/vpcs/vms/daefc24a-103c-4717-8e01-6517d931c1ae/start" -d '{}'

Everything should be started now. You can connect via telnet to the different Node. The port is the field console in the create Node request.

# telnet 127.0.0.1 2000
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.

Welcome to Virtual PC Simulator, version 0.6
Dedicated to Daling.
Build time: Dec 29 2014 12:51:46
Copyright (c) 2007-2014, Paul Meng (mirnshi@gmail.com)
All rights reserved.

VPCS is free software, distributed under the terms of the "BSD" licence.
Source code and license can be found at vpcs.sf.net.
For more information, please visit wiki.freecode.com.cn.

Press '?' to get help.

VPCS> ip 192.168.1.1
Checking for duplicate address...
PC1 : 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0

VPCS> disconnect 

Good-bye
Connection closed by foreign host.

# telnet 127.0.0.1 2001
telnet 127.0.0.1 2001
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.

Welcome to Virtual PC Simulator, version 0.6
Dedicated to Daling.
Build time: Dec 29 2014 12:51:46
Copyright (c) 2007-2014, Paul Meng (mirnshi@gmail.com)
All rights reserved.

VPCS is free software, distributed under the terms of the "BSD" licence.
Source code and license can be found at vpcs.sf.net.
For more information, please visit wiki.freecode.com.cn.

Press '?' to get help.

VPCS> ip 192.168.1.2
Checking for duplicate address...
PC1 : 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0

VPCS> ping 192.168.1.1
84 bytes from 192.168.1.1 icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.179 ms
84 bytes from 192.168.1.1 icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.218 ms
84 bytes from 192.168.1.1 icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.190 ms
84 bytes from 192.168.1.1 icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.198 ms
84 bytes from 192.168.1.1 icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.185 ms

VPCS> disconnect
Good-bye
Connection closed by foreign host.

Limitations

Concurrency

A node can't process multiple request in the same time. But you can make multiple request on multiple node. It's transparent for the client when the first request on a Node start a lock is acquire for this node id and released for the next request at the end. You can safely send all the requests in the same time and let the server manage an efficent concurrency.

We think it can be a little slower for some operations, but it's remove a big complexity for the client due to the fact only some command on some node can be concurrent.

Authentication

You can use HTTP basic auth to protect the access to the API. And run the API over HTTPS.

Notifications

You can receive notification from the server if you listen the HTTP stream /notifications or the websocket.

The available notification are:

ping
compute.created
compute.updated
compute.deleted
node.created
node.updated
node.deleted
link.created
link.updated
link.deleted
log.error
log.warning
log.info

Previous versions

API version 1

Shipped with GNS3 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5. This API doesn't support the controller system.

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