After a few weeks of hard work by nelsonab something awesome has appeared.

Zabbix commandline tool.

This is possible thanks to the new API in trunk (what will be released as 1.8).

So what can it do already? While this tool currently is in a prototype phase, it can do some practical things.

That's right, it has a nice command line (readline enabled with command history and editing). It already has support for a configuration file to store Zabbix URL, username and password. And we can get a list of users. What else?

Great, we can also list hosts already. Surely that's all for a prototype level utility? Nope, we have one more trick for you.

While still very limited, this screenshot shows that results can easily be filtered.

Benefits from such a tool could be enormous. While API already provides ways to automate many things not possible before, it is much harder to use. What problems could the CLI tool solve?

• Scripting complex or repetitive actions. While some were possible with XML export, edit, import, that was tedious, and did not solve all problems.
• Access data in ways not possible from the frontend. Zabbix administrators have constructed SQL statements to get all kinds of data. The CLI tool should allow (someday) to easily list all unsupported items, for example. Now how awesome will that be?
• Bring world peace.

That is understandable. And you can get it! All code is stored in a Subversion repository. You can easily check it out:

svn co http://svn.red-tux.net/ruby/api

There's also trac instance set up with initial description and issue tracker. Testers and bugreports are welcome.

A reminder - you need current Zabbix trunk to try this tool.

As some might already have deducted, it is written in Ruby. If you want to help, you can contact nelsonab on the forum, or on IRC – freenode network, channel #zabbix.

There's one more thing before I dive back into the awesomeness of this tool. “CLI tool” isn't exactly the best name, now is it? So even if you do not write code, can't test the tool, you can help to decide what it's name should be. For that we have created poll on the forum – head over there and help us choose a name that helps to grow.