Another interesting project that we can download and check is JQZabbix. For more information about this project, you can refer to https://github.com/kodai/jqzabbix.

JQZabbix is a demo application readymade to test the Zabbix API and, sometimes, it can be useful to have it installed somewhere as it allows a simple web browser to do a JSON-RPC query against our Zabbix server without the need to write scripts.

To install the package, we need to download the package; here, we can simply clone the GitHub repository with the following command:

$ mkdir jqzabbix && cd jqzabbix
$ git clone https://github.com/kodai/jqzabbix

The project will download a demo directory contained in the jqzabbix GitHub clone. We need to create a new location that we can call jqzabbix under DocumentRoot of httpd. Usually, the document root is located at /var/www/html, but it is better to check the DocumentRoot directive under /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. Running the following command as root, we can now copy the required jqzabbix files:

$ mkdir /var/www/html/jqzabbix
$ cp <your-jqzabbix-location>/demo/* /var/www/html/jqzabbix/
$ cp <your-jqzabbix-location>/jqzabbix/* /var/www/html/jqzabbix/
Now all you have to do to see it in action is edit the file main.js changing the following entry:
// Zabbix server API url
var url = 'http://localhost/zabbix/api_jsonrpc.php';

This url variable needs to contain the real IP address or DNS name of our Zabbix server.

Once this is done, you can simply check by opening a browser. The home page is available at http://<your-zabbix-server>/jqzabbix/.

Opening your browser, you'll see something similar to the following screenshot:

This application is interesting to see as it is an example of coding the Zabbix API using jQuery. This application enables you to use most of the methods supported by the Zabbix API:

What follows, for instance, is the result of a host.get call:

Let's see with more details how this application works. You can take a look at the main.js file. The first thing that is done is the creation of the jqzabbix object with several options, which are mostly optional. The following are the default values:

server = new $.jqzabbix({
    url: 'http://localhost/zabbix/api_jsonrpc.php',  // URL of Zabbix API
    username: 'Admin',   // Zabbix login user name
    password: 'zabbix',  // Zabbix login password
    basicauth: false,    // If you use basic authentication, set true for this option
    busername: '',       // User name for basic authentication
    bpassword: '',       // Password for basic authentication
    timeout: 5000,       // Request timeout (milli second)
    limit: 1000,         // Max data number for one request
})

Then, check the Zabbix API version with the following calls:

server.getApiVersion();

If the request is completed successfully, it is time for authentication:

server.userLogin();

Once it is completed, the authentication ID is stored in server property. Now, you can execute the normal API method as per their own definition:

server.sendAjaxRequest(method, params, success, error)

Here, we have:

As you can see, this is a very simple package but it can be really useful to compare the values returned by the API with your own scripts and so on. Plus, it is a good starting point if you're thinking about coding a jQuery application. Here, thanks to the Zabbix API, the only limit we have is our imagination, but the API thanks the developer for allowing us to automate all the repetitive tasks and many maintenance tasks.