Validating APIs

Please make sure you go through this before you wonder why zmNinja is not working.

Assumption: Your ZM server is accessible at http://server/zm -> replace this with your actual path

Important

Make sure you have the following settings in ZM:

• AUTH_RELAY is set to hashed

• A valid AUTH_HASH_SECRET is provided (not empty)

• AUTH_HASH_IPS is disabled

• OPT_USE_APIS is enabled

• If you are using any version lower than ZM 1.34, OPT_USE_GOOG_RECAPTCHA is disabled

• If you are NOT using authentication at all in ZM, that is OPT_USE_AUTH is disabled, then make sure you also disable authentication in zmNinja, otherwise it will keep waiting for auth keys.

Make sure ZM APIs are working:

Note 1: nginx users, if you are facing API issues, please see if this page helps)

Note 2: It is important that you run the API tests from the device you plan to use zmNinja with. Very often, I’ve seen folks doing API tests on the same server ZM is running on and then face issues (mostly due to network connectivity) when using zmNinja because it is running on a different device. So, I’d recommend you open a chrome browser on the device you plan to use zmNinja on (desktop or mobile) and then run these tests.

• Step 1: Open up a browser

• Step 2: Log into ZM

• Step 3: Open another tab in the same browser (IMPORTANT: Has to be from the same browser you logged into ZM)

• Step 4: Type in http://server/zm/api/host/getVersion.json –> you should see a response like:

  {
  "version": "1.30.0",
  "apiversion": "1.0"
  }
  

  version/apiversion may be different. If you don’t see such a response, your APIs are not working

• Step 5: Make sure you can see monitors and events:

Type in http://server/zm/api/monitors.json –> you should see a response like:

{
    "monitors": [
        {
            "Monitor": {
                /*lots of additional details*/
            },
            /*more monitor objects if you have more than one*/
        }]
}

If you don’t see such a response, your APIs are not working

• Step 6: (If you find your APIs show ok, but zmNinja has issues)

  • Open a browser, log into ZM

  • Open a new tab, enter http://server/zm/api/host/getVersion.json

  • Now, right click and do a View Source in your browser (different browsers may have different names for it). This brings up a full source code view of the page. Do you ONLY see the JSON output or do you see gobs of HTML on top like <pre class= and lots of cake related messages? If you do, you need to fix it.

if you find the page empty, your APIs/permissions have a problem. Please post in the ZM forums (please DON’T contact me first as its not a zmNinja bug)

Type in http://server/zm/api/events.json –> you should see a response like: (this list may be an empty set if you don’t have events but you will still see the {"events":[]} text - if you find the page empty, your APIs have a problem. Please post in the ZM forums (please DON’T contact me first, as its not a zmNinja bug)

{"events":[{"Event":{ /* many more details */ }}]}

Top reasons why monitors and events API returns blank while getVersion works:

• You don’t have monitor/event view permissions allocated

• You don’t have system view permissions (zmNinja needs this to access /servers.json API)

• You have an invalid camera definition (happens sometimes when you remove and re-add cameras)

zmNinja API notes:

• Please make sure the user credentials you use has:

• view or edit access to monitors

• view or edit access to streams

• view or edit access to system

• If you are accessing zmNinja remotely, make sure you first access ZM remotely from your desktop browser, ensure it works and then use the same DNS/IP for zmNinja

• If you are sure everything looks good, but zmNinja is causing issues, also try and clear API cache (menu->clear API cache)