Cisco AXL SOAP Library

A Javascript library to pull AXL data Cisco CUCM via SOAP. The goal of this project is to make it easier for people to use AXL and to include all functionality of AXL. This library utilizes strong-soap to read Cisco's WSDL file. As a result this library can use any function in the schema for the version that you specify.

Administrative XML (AXL) information can be found at: Administrative XML (AXL) Reference.

Installation

Using npm:

npm i -g npm
npm i --save cisco-axl

Requirements

This package uses the built in Fetch API of Node. This feature was first introduced in Node v16.15.0. You may need to enable expermential vm module. Also you can disable warnings with an optional enviromental variable.

Also if you are using self signed certificates on Cisco VOS products you may need to disable TLS verification. This makes TLS, and HTTPS by extension, insecure. The use of this environment variable is strongly discouraged. Please only do this in a lab enviroment.

Suggested enviromental variables:

NODE_OPTIONS=--experimental-vm-modules
NODE_NO_WARNINGS=1
NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0

Features

• This library uses strong-soap to parse the AXL WSDL file. As a result any AXL function for your specified version is avaliable to use!
• Supports the Promise API. Can chain procedures together or you could use Promise.all() to run multiple "get" operations at the same time.
• Returns all results in JSON rather than XML. Function has options to remove all blank or empty fields from JSON results via optional clean parameter.
• Support for json-variables. The executeOperation function will recognize the dataContainerIdentifierTails from json-variables and remove them from your call. This avoids any SOAP fault issues from having extra information in call. See examples folder for use case.

Usage

const axlService = require("cisco-axl");

let service = new axlService("10.10.20.1", "administrator", "ciscopsdt","14.0");

var operation = "addRoutePartition";
var tags = {
  routePartition: {
    name: "INTERNAL-PT",
    description: "Internal directory numbers",
    timeScheduleIdName: "",
    useOriginatingDeviceTimeZone: "",
    timeZone: "",
    partitionUsage: "",
  },
};

service
  .executeOperation(operation, tags)
  .then((results) => {
    console.log("addRoutePartition UUID", results);
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    console.log(error);
  });

Methods

• new axlService(options: obj)
• axlService.returnOperations(filter?: string)
• axlService.getOperationTags(operation: string)
• axlService.executeOperation(operation: string,tags: obj, opts?: obj)

new axlService(options)

Service constructor for methods. Requires a JSON object consisting of hostname, username, password and version.

let service = new axlService("10.10.20.1", "administrator", "ciscopsdt", "14.0");

service.returnOperations(filter?) ⇒ Returns promise

Method takes optional argument to filter results. No argument returns all operations. Returns results via Promise.

Method	Argument	Type	Obligatory	Description
returnOperations	filter	string	No	Provide a string to filter results.

service.getOperationTags(operation) ⇒ Returns promise

Method requires passing an AXL operation. Returns results via Promise.

Method	Argument	Type	Obligatory	Description
getOperationTags	operation	string	Yes	Provide the name of the AXL operation you wish to retrieve the tags for.

service.executeOperation(operation,tags,opts?) ⇒ Returns promise

Method requires passing an AXL operation and JSON object of tags. Returns results via Promise.

Current options include:

option	type	description
clean	boolean	Default: false. Allows method to remove all tags that have no values from return data.
removeAttributes	boolean	Default: false. Allows method to remove all attributes tags return data.
dataContainerIdentifierTails	string	Default: '_data'. executeOperation will automatically remove any tag with the defined string. This is used with json-variables library.

Example:

var opts = {
  clean: true,
  removeAttributes: false,
  dataContainerIdentifierTails: "_data",
};

Method	Argument	Type	Obligatory	Description
executeOperation	operation	string	Yes	Provide the name of the AXL operation you wish to execute.
executeOperation	tags	object	Yes	Provide a JSON object of the tags for your operation.
executeOperation	opts	object	No	Provide a JSON object of options for your operation.

Examples

Check examples folder for different ways to use this library. Each folder should have a README to explain about each example.

You can also run the tests.js against Cisco's DevNet sandbox so see how each various method works.

npm run test

Note: Test are using Cisco's DevNet sandbox information. Find more information here: Cisco DevNet.

json-variables support

At a tactical level, json-variables program lets you take a plain object (JSON files contents) and add special markers in any value which you can then reference in a different path.

This library will recoginize json-variables *_data keys in the tags and delete before executing the operation.

Example:

var lineTemplate = {
  pattern: "%%_extension_%%",
  routePartitionName: "",
  alertingName: "%%_firstName_%% %%_lastName_%%",
  asciiAlertingName: "%%_firstName_%% %%_lastName_%%",
  description: "%%_firstName_%% %%_lastName_%%",
  _data: {
    extension: "1001",
    firstName: "Tom",
    lastName: "Smith",
  },
};

const lineTags = jVar(lineTemplate);

service
  .executeOperation("updateLine", lineTags)
  .then((results) => {
    console.log(results);
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    console.log(error);
  });

Note: If you need to change the variables key you can so via options in both the json-variables and with executeOperations.

Example:

...
const lineTags = jVar(lineTemplate,{ dataContainerIdentifierTails: "_variables"});

service.executeOperation("updateLine", lineTags,{ dataContainerIdentifierTails: "_variables"})
...

Limitations

Currently there is an issue with strong-soap regarding returning nillable values for element tags. These values show if a particular tags is optional or not. Once resolved a method will be added to return tags nillable status (true or false).

TODO

• Add more promised based examples, particularly a Promise.All() example.
• Add example for reading in CSV and performing a bulk exercise with variables.
• Add example for saving SQL output to CSV or uploading to cloud (Airtable or SmartSheets).

Giving Back

If you would like to support my work and the time I put in creating the code, you can click the image below to get me a coffee. I would really appreciate it (but is not required).

Buy Me a Coffee