REST API

Managing large amounts of information by using the application user interface can be time-consuming. You can use the REST APIs as an alternative to the graphical user interface to reduce the time that is needed to manage your software inventory and the content of your software catalog.

Important: If you want to use REST API when you are not logged in to BigFix Inventory, you must provide the token parameter for each query. To check the token, log in to BigFix Inventory, hover over the User icon User icon, and click Profile. Then, click Show token.

The token parameter is not required when you are logged in to BigFix Inventory.

Although using single API requests to retrieve data only from a selected subset of computers does not greatly impact the performance of BigFix Inventory, this is not true when retrieving data in bulk for all your computer systems at the same time. To improve the performance of a REST API, retrieve the data in chunks. For more information, see: REST API considerations.

Restriction: Do not use REST API during the import as you might encounter a problem with the database connection. If the problem occurs, wait until the import finishes and ensure that the BigFix Inventory server is up and running. Then, repeat the API call.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in the documentation that is related to REST API:

HTTP
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP version 1.1 is defined in RFC 2616. Unless otherwise noted, the use of the term HTTP indicates both HTTP and HTTPS.
HTTPS
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure, as defined in RFC 2818
JSON
JavaScript Object Notation, as defined in ECMA-262
REST
Representational State Transfer, as originally and informally described in Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures
URI
Uniform Resource Identifier, as defined in RFC 3986, Draft 5