Skip to content

FogApi

about_FogApi

SHORT DESCRIPTION

A module for managing FOG API operations via powershell

LONG DESCRIPTION

This is a powershell module to make using the Fog Project API even easier.
FOG is an opensource tool for imaging comptuters, this module uses the API on your internal fog server to perform almost any operation. It can be used to create more automation or to simply have a command line method of controlling fog operations.

Versioning

The versioning of this module follows this pattern

{Year|Month}.{Major Version}.{Build/Revision #}

Year/Month

This versioning shows you first the Year and Month the module was published, giving you an idea of when it was last updated.

Major

The Major version follows the typical major versioning where any major changes will increment this version number, especially possible breaking changes or structural changes, etc.

Minor/Build/Revision

Not every revision will be published. This is auto incremented every time the build script is used to test something. Not all of these changes are added to git or published so there is often a jump between releases representing how many builds/revisions have taken place during development.

Installation

All completed/tested/stable releases of this module will be published to powershell gallery.
You can also download the sources zip from the latest release and manually build the module with the build.ps1 script

Requirements

To install this module you need at least powershell v3, was created with 5.1 and intended to be cross platform compatible with powershell v6 and v7

To Install this module follow these steps...

Install From PSGallery

  • Easiest method: Install from PSGallery via a powershell console with the command
  • Install-Module -name fogApi

Update from psgallery

Update-Module FogApi

Note: Powershell supports side by side versions, after updating you may want to uninstall old versions with this snippet to avoid conflicting versions. This needs to be run as an admin to uninstall for all users, you can also have installed the module per user, in which case you can add the 

#find the latest version from the psgallery
$latestModule = Find-Module FogApi;
#get all installed versions of the module, filter to where the version isn't the latest, and then uninstall each of those
(Get-installedmodule FogApi -AllVersions) | Where-Object { $latestModule.version -notmatch $_.version } | Uninstall-Module -Force

Manual Installation

  • Manual Method:
  • download the zip of this repo and extract it
    • Or clone the repo using your favorite git tool, you just need the FogApi Folder this readme is in
  • Run the build.ps1 script
  • Copy the built module folder ($env:userprofile\moduleBuild\fogAPI) into...
    • For Windows Powershell v3-v5.1
      • C:\Program Files\WindowsPowershell\Modules
    • For Windows Powershell v6+
      • C:\Program Files\PowerShell\6-preview\Modules
        • 6-Preview may need to be replaced with whatever current version you have installed
    • For Linux Powershell v6+
      • /opt/microsoft/powershell/6.1.0-preview.2/Modules
        • 6.1.0-preview.2 may need to be replaced with whatever current version you have installed
    • For Mac Powershell v6+ (untested)
      • /usr/local/microsoft/powershell/6.x/Modules
        • 6.x should be replaced with whatever most current version you are using
        • I haven't tested this on a mac, the module folder may be somewhere else
          this is based on where it is in other powershell 6 installs
  • Open a powershell window
  • Run Import-Module FogApi

You can also import the built module from its build path, the above method makes it available by name

The module is now installed.

Using The Module

The first time you try to run a command the settings.json file will automatically open
in notepad on windows, nano on linux, or TextEdit on Mac
You can also open the settings.json file and edit it manually before running your first command.
The default settings are explanations of where to find the proper settings since json can't have comments
You can also use Set-FogServerSettings to set the api tokens for the sever and your user in one command. You first need to obtain these keys/tokens from the fog web gui. replace fog-server in the below example links with the name of your internal fog server if different

Once you've obtained these you can run the command like this to save your fog api settings for the current user in a json file under $home/APPDATA/Roaming/FogApi/api-settings.json (this appdata path is created in linux/mac home folders) 

Set-FogServerSettings -fogApiToken "SuperLongPastedFogToken" -fogUserToken "SuperLongPastedUserToken" -fogServer "fog-server-hostname"

Once the settings are set you can have a jolly good time utilzing the fog documentation
found here that was used to model the parameters

i.e.

Get-FogObject has a type param that validates to object, objectactivetasktype, and search as those are the options given in the documentation.
Each of those types validates (which means autocompletion) to the core types listed in the documentation.
So if you typed in Get-FogObject -Type object -Object h and then started hitting tab, it would loop through the possible core objects you can get from the api that start with 'h' such as history, host, etc.

Unless you filter a get with a json body it will return all the results into a powershell object. That object is easy to work with to create other commands. Note: Full Pipeline support will come at a later time
i.e.

$hosts = Get-FogObject -Type Object -CoreObject Host

Does a GET call on http://fog-server/fog/host to list all hosts
Now you can search all your hosts for the one or ones you're looking for with powershell.
maybe you want to find all the hosts with 'IT' in the name (note '?' is an alias for Where-Object)
$ITHosts = $hosts.hosts | ? name -match 'IT';

Now maybe you want to change the image all of these computers use to one named 'IT-Image'
You can edit the object in powershell with a foreach-object ('%' is an alias for foreach-object)
$updatedITHosts = $ITHosts | % { $_.imagename = 'IT-image'}

Then you need to convert that object to json and pass each object into one api call at a time. Which sounds complicated, but it's not, it's as easy as

$updateITHosts | % { 
    $jsonData = $_ | ConvertTo-Json;
    Update-FogObject -Type object -CoreObject host -objectID $_.id -jsonData $jsonData;
    #successful result of updated objects properties 
    #or any error messages will output to screen for each object
}

This is just one small example of the limitless things you can do with the api and powershell objects.

see also the fogforum thread for the module https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/12026/powershell-api-module/2