bulk get protocol in Zabbix 1.5.x (using JSON ??)

[sudheert]

Hi,
I looked at the release notes for Zabbix 1.5.2 and was excited to see there
is now support for retrieving multiple item values in one request from the Zabbix
server. Here's the quote from release notes:

:: More efficient communication with agents

ZABBIX Agent supports data buffering, which can be tuned by new configuration parameters, BufferSize and BufferSend. Communication protocol has been improved to support sending of multiple values by one TCP connection.

I am using the ZapCat Java (JMX) <--> Zabbix bridge, that uses the
old protocol. I am interested in adding support in ZapCat for JSON. Where can
I get documentation or a brief description of the changes to the protocol?

Thanks!

[Kees Jan Koster]

The old protocol is documented on the Zabbix wiki. Perhaps someone could add the new protocol there too?

Why JSON, by the way? That is a JavaScript protocol, if we are talking about the same protocol. My idea with Zapcat is that it should implement the Zabbix protocols, not add new ones.

[Alexei]

Actually XML and JSON were the only options. I do not like XML because of huge overhead on parsing and processing. So, starting from 1.6 we use JSON based protocol, which is backward compatible with 1.4.x and even 1.1.x.

[sudheert]

Alexei:
Kees Jan and I were in an email conversation about extending the ZapCat
agent (Zabbix-JMX bridge) written by him to do bulk gets of data. Could you point us to the request/response protocol for doing this? What would need to be passed on the socket, and what is the format of JSON object?

[mlange]

Hello sudheert,

did you make any progress on it? I am also interested in getting bulk data from zapcat!

[sudheert]

mlange,
I am still waiting for Alexei to point me to the JSON based protocol specification.

Alexei:
Could you please point me to the JSON based request-response protocol for Zabbix 1.6?

Thanks,
Sudheer

[mlange]

If it is not documented as the XML protocol it shouldn't be that hard to gather the needed information from the code implemented in Zabbix?

[sudheert]

I wasn't familiar with the Zabbix codebase earlier, but before posting the question I browsed through it... couldn't find where/how it was being used.

mlange, if you are able to find it, let me know. I'll download the 1.6 codebase and retry tonight

[mlange]

I am also not familiar with the code base and it seems to be quite hard to grep the information from the code. JSON as a protocol itself seems to be pretty easy. For Java there is a lot of helper code existing: http://www.json.org/java/json.zip

However without the exact specification how JSON is implemented in Zabbix it is hard to integrate it into Zapcat.

Can someone of the Zabbix developers summarize shortly how the protocol is used in Zabbix as it was done with the XML protocol: http://www.zabbix.com/wiki/doku.php?id=zabbixprotocol?

[amit.gaur]

Bulk Get

Hi,
I'd also like to know if there is support in Zabbix for getting bulk data back.

the exact scenario im looking for is to be able to
1.write an agent that sends bulk data back to the server(multiple key/val pairs)
2. On the zabbix server end, parse these key val pairs to feed them into multiple items/triggers

Any ideas on how I can do this?