Nexus is a collection of services available
for us to automate. With the services available we can integrate them in the
work flow that we need. Nexus also exposes the services as Rest services so
that we can use them to automate things. In this article we will see how we can
use the nexus rest api to automate things.
While nexus has a rich set of Rest end
points for every thing from core actions like storing artifacts in the repository
to creating users and repositories, but the documentation is little touch to
find. Here are the steps you need to take to access this documentation:
- Login
as an Administrator
- In
the Administration section of the left-hand menu, click on Plugin Console
to open the Plugin Console.
- Once
in the Plugin Console you will see a list of Nexus Plugins. Click on a
plugin to view the APIs it provides.
- Once
you select a plugin, you should see a list of APIs. For example, the video
below shows the Core API, click on the link in the Plugin Console to view
the REST API documentation.
We will use the CURL command available in Linux
to make the rest calls. Nexus uses a
single end point with changing services to communicate on the rest.
/nexus/service/local
is the endpoint and by adding the service after this we can make a rest call to
automate different things. Below are the few nexus services that we can use to
communicate
nexus_status_service: status
nexus_users_service: users
nexus_repositories_service: repositories
nexus_roles_service: roles
Lets see a few examples on making use of
the nexus rest API
Simple
Get calls
Retrieve
the status of the Nexus Server -
Retrieve
the available nexus repositories
Authenticated
REST - GET requests
User
Details– In order to retrieve some details we need to send the
credentials details. Curl Command also allows us to pass the credentials. In
order to retrieve a user details the Rest call needs the credentials and this
can be done as,
Delete
Repositories
We can also pass other HTTP parameter like
DELETE using the curl command and make a Rest call as,
curl -X DELETE -v -u admin:admin123
http://localhost:8081/nexus/service/local/repositories/my-releases-xml
Post
Calls – The most important call will be the Post call since
we will be using this to create things. Lets see on creating a repository using
the CURL post call along with the XML payload
Create a XML file new_user.xml with user
details as,
<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="UTF-8"?>
<user-request>
<data>
<userId>master</userId>
<email>master@gmail.com</email>
<status>active</status>
<firstName>mind</firstName>
<resourceURI>http://puppet.jas.com:8081/nexus/service/local/roles/repository-any-full</resourceURI>
<roles>
<role>npm-all-view</role>
</roles>
<lastName>minder</lastName>
<password>test123</password>
</data>
</user-request>
In the above snippet we are creating a new
user master. In order to make the call we can call the CURL command as,
curl -i -H "Accept:
application/xml" -H "Content-Type: application/xml;
charset=UTF-8" -v -d
"@new_user.xml" -u admin:admin123
http://puppet.jas.com:8081/nexus/service/local/users
In the above command we are using the users
service to make the rest call and create a user by passing the xml payload that
we created in the file. Once we ran the curl command we can see the output as
below which includes the necessary return code details.
* About to connect() to puppet.jas.com port
8081 (#0)
*
Trying 172.16.202.95...
* Connected to puppet.jas.com
(172.16.202.95) port 8081 (#0)
* Server auth using Basic with user 'admin'
> POST /nexus/service/local/users
HTTP/1.1
> Authorization: Basic
YWRtaW46YWRtaW4xMjM=
> User-Agent: curl/7.29.0
> Host: puppet.jas.com:8081
> Accept: application/xml
> Content-Type: application/xml;
charset=UTF-8
> Content-Length: 424
>
* upload completely sent off: 424 out of
424 bytes
< HTTP/1.1 201 Created
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
< Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 08:27:23 GMT
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 08:27:23 GMT
< X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
< X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
< Server: Nexus/2.13.0-01
Noelios-Restlet-Engine/1.1.6-SONATYPE-5348-V8
Server: Nexus/2.13.0-01
Noelios-Restlet-Engine/1.1.6-SONATYPE-5348-V8
< Content-Type: application/xml;
charset=UTF-8
Content-Type: application/xml;
charset=UTF-8
< Content-Length: 388
Content-Length: 388
<
<user-response>
<data>
<resourceURI>http://puppet.jas.com:8081/nexus/service/local/users/master</resourceURI>
<userId>master</userId>
<password>test123</password>
<firstName>mind</firstName>
<lastName>minder</lastName>
<status>active</status>
<email>master@gmail.com</email>
<roles>
<role>npm-all-view</role>
</roles>
</data>
* Connection #0 to host puppet.jas.com left
intact
</user-response>
Besides passing the XML file as payload ,
nexus also accepts the JSON content as payload even and CURL command allows us
to do so. Create a file repo.json with the repository details as,
[puppet@root$:/test]$ cat repo.json
{
"data": {
"repoType": "proxy",
"id": "somerepo",
"name": "Some Repo Name",
"browseable": true,
"indexable": true,
"notFoundCacheTTL": 1440,
"artifactMaxAge": -1,
"metadataMaxAge": 1440,
"itemMaxAge": 1440,
"repoPolicy": "RELEASE",
"provider": "maven2",
"providerRole":
"org.sonatype.nexus.proxy.repository.Repository",
"downloadRemoteIndexes": true,
"autoBlockActive": true,
"fileTypeValidation": true,
"exposed": true,
"checksumPolicy": "WARN",
"remoteStorage": {
"remoteStorageUrl":
"http://puppet.jas.com:8081/local",
"authentication": null,
"connectionSettings": null
}
}
}
Now we can run the CURL command as,
In the above command we have changed the
content-type to json unlike xml.
That’s all about using the nexus Rest api
and curl command. Below are the few
examples on using nexus Rest api
Get
Single Repository Details
curl -k
http://puppet.jas.com:8081/nexus/service/local/repositories/releases -u
Get
Repository Status
curl -k
http://puppet.jas.com:8081/nexus/service/local/repository_statuses -u
admin:admin123
Getting
a list of all users, now with authenticating as admin user
curl -X GET -u admin:admin123
http://localhost:8081/nexus/service/local/users
Retive
the account Details
curl -k
http://puppet.jas.com:8081/nexus/service/local/user_account/admin -u
admin:admin123
Get
the list of users available
curl -X GET -u admin:admin123
http://172.16.202.96:9091/nexus/service/local/users
Get
the list of repositories available
curl
http://172.16.202.96:9091/nexus/service/local/repositories
Hope this Helps.
