Efficient use of the API

[wamsterdam]

Hi,

I'm trying to use the API to put together a small report, but I have my doubts in myself using it efficiently. I'd like to retrieve some item information for all hosts using template X.

So first I use the API template.get to retrieve all hosts connected to template X. Then I loop through the hosts one by one to retrieve the item information using item.get. That's an API request for each item for each host. So for 10 hosts with 5 items each, that's 50 requests. Wouldn't it be more efficient to request all 5 items per host in a single request? If so, how do I accomplish that?

TIA,
Wouter

[steveboyson]

Don't know if that helps:

https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.0/manual/appendix/api/item/get

It seems to me that it can return more than one item.

[wamsterdam]

steveboyson,

As shown in the example at the page you mentioned, a "search" method is used to retrieve all keys with value 'system'. In my case, I already know which keys I need to retrieve. Directly querying the key as I do now, would be more database-efficient than first searching for the keys and than query their values, I assume?

Wouter

[MaxM]

The itemids param can take more than a single itemid. In fact, it can take an array. E.g.

{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "item.get",
"params": {
"output": "extend",
"itemids": ["10135", "10222", "140812"],
"sortfield": "name"
},
"auth": "038e1d7b1735c6a5436ee9eae095879e",
"id": 1
}

You do not even need to use the hostid if you know the itemid, the itemid field is unique.