fleet/docs/api
Zachary Wasserman c8229cc0d6
Replace uses of the term "Kolide" with "Fleet" (#1999)
Almost two years ago, we began referring to the project as Fleet, but there are
many occurences of the term "Kolide" throughout the UI and documentation. This
PR attempts to clear up those uses where it is easily achievable.

The term "Kolide" is used throughout the code as well, but modifying this would
be more likely to introduce bugs.
2019-01-24 09:39:32 -08:00
..
README.md Replace uses of the term "Kolide" with "Fleet" (#1999) 2019-01-24 09:39:32 -08:00

API Documentation

Kolide Fleet is powered by a Go API server which serves three types of endpoints:

  • Endpoints starting with /api/v1/osquery/ are osquery TLS server API endpoints. All of these endpoints are used for talking to osqueryd agents and that's it.
  • Endpoints starting with /api/v1/kolide/ are endpoints to interact with the Fleet data model (packs, queries, scheduled queries, labels, hosts, etc) as well as application endpoints (configuring settings, logging in, session management, etc).
  • All other endpoints are served the React single page application bundle. The React app uses React Router to determine whether or not the URI is a valid route and what to do.

Only osquery agents should interact with the osquery API, but we'd like to support the eventual use of the Fleet API extensively. The API is not very well documented at all right now, but we have plans to:

  • Generate and publish detailed documentation via a tool built using test2doc (or similar).
  • Release a JavaScript Fleet API client library (which would be derived from the current JavaScript API client).
  • Commit to a stable, standardized API format.

Fleetctl

Many of the operations that a user may wish to perform with an API are currently best performed via the fleetctl tooling. These CLI tools allow updating of the osquery configuration entities, as well as performing live queries.

Current API

The general idea with the current API is that there are many entities throughout the Fleet application, such as:

  • Queries
  • Packs
  • Labels
  • Hosts

Each set of objects follows a similar REST access pattern.

  • You can GET /api/v1/kolide/packs to get all packs
  • You can GET /api/v1/kolide/packs/1 to get a specific pack.
  • You can DELETE /api/v1/kolide/packs/1 to delete a specific pack.
  • You can POST /api/v1/kolide/packs (with a valid body) to create a new pack.
  • You can PATCH /api/v1/kolide/packs/1 (with a valid body) to modify a specific pack.

Queries, packs, scheduled queries, labels, invites, users, sessions all behave this way. Some objects, like invites, have additional HTTP methods for additional functionality. Some objects, such as scheduled queries, are merely a relationship between two other objects (in this case, a query and a pack) with some details attached.

All of these objects are put together and distributed to the appropriate osquery agents at the appropriate time. At this time, the best source of truth for the API is the HTTP handler file in the Go application. The REST API is exposed via a transport layer on top of an RPC service which is implemented using a micro-service library called Go Kit. If using the Fleet API is important to you right now, being familiar with Go Kit would definitely be helpful.