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GraphQL API Overview

NetBox provides a read-only GraphQL API to complement its REST API. This API is powered by the Graphene library and Graphene-Django.

Queries

GraphQL enables the client to specify an arbitrary nested list of fields to include in the response. All queries are made to the root /graphql API endpoint. For example, to return the circuit ID and provider name of each circuit with an active status, you can issue a request such as the following:

curl -H "Authorization: Token $TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Accept: application/json" \
http://netbox/graphql/ \
--data '{"query": "query {circuit_list(status:\"active\") {cid provider {name}}}"}'

The response will include the requested data formatted as JSON:

{
  "data": {
    "circuits": [
      {
        "cid": "1002840283",
        "provider": {
          "name": "CenturyLink"
        }
      },
      {
        "cid": "1002840457",
        "provider": {
          "name": "CenturyLink"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Note

It's recommended to pass the return data through a JSON parser such as jq for better readability.

NetBox provides both a singular and plural query field for each object type:

  • $OBJECT: Returns a single object. Must specify the object's unique ID as (id: 123).
  • $OBJECT_list: Returns a list of objects, optionally filtered by given parameters.

For example, query device(id:123) to fetch a specific device (identified by its unique ID), and query device_list (with an optional set of filters) to fetch all devices.

For more detail on constructing GraphQL queries, see the Graphene documentation as well as the GraphQL queries documentation.

Filtering

The GraphQL API employs the same filtering logic as the UI and REST API. Filters can be specified as key-value pairs within parentheses immediately following the query name. For example, the following will return only sites within the North Carolina region with a status of active:

{"query": "query {site_list(region:\"north-carolina\", status:\"active\") {name}}"}
In addition, filtering can be done on list of related objects as shown in the following query:

{
  device_list {
    id
    name
    interfaces(enabled: true) {
      name
    }
  }
}

Multiple Return Types

Certain queries can return multiple types of objects, for example cable terminations can return circuit terminations, console ports and many others. These can be queried using inline fragments as shown below:

{
    cable_list {
      id
      a_terminations {
        ... on CircuitTerminationType {
          id
          class_type
        }
        ... on ConsolePortType {
          id
          class_type
        }
        ... on ConsoleServerPortType {
          id
          class_type
        }
      }
    }
}
The field "class_type" is an easy way to distinguish what type of object it is when viewing the returned data, or when filtering. It contains the class name, for example "CircuitTermination" or "ConsoleServerPort".

Authentication

NetBox's GraphQL API uses the same API authentication tokens as its REST API. Authentication tokens are included with requests by attaching an Authorization HTTP header in the following form:

Authorization: Token $TOKEN

Disabling the GraphQL API

If not needed, the GraphQL API can be disabled by setting the GRAPHQL_ENABLED configuration parameter to False and restarting NetBox.