Community Training Classes & Labs > F5 Programmability Training Index
Lab 2.5: iWorkflow REST Proxy¶
In order to enable Imperative automation use cases, iWorkflow includes a REST proxy that allows pass-through of REST requests to devices managed by iWorkflow. The REST proxy feature allows customers to simplify automation by:
- Providing a centralized API endpoint for BIG-IP infrastructure
- No need to communicate with individual BIG-IP devices, only with iWorkflow
- Simplified authentication
- Strong authentication can be implemented at iWorkflow rather than on each BIG-IP
- Simplified RBAC
- RBAC can be implemented at iWorkflow for all devices rather on individual devices in the environment
The REST proxy works by passing data sent to a specific URL through to the BIG-IP device. The root URL for a particular devices REST proxy is:
/mgmt/shared/resolver/device-groups/cm-cloud-managed-devices/devices/<device\_uuid>/rest-proxy/
Any URL segments included after …/rest-proxy/ are forwarded unaltered
to the BIG-IP device. Query parameters (e.g. ?expandSubcollections=true)
are also passed unaltered along with the request type and request body.
Task 1 – Perform REST operations via the REST Proxy¶
In this task we will perform a sample CRUD operation utilizing the REST Proxy. The intent of this task is to show the basic mechanism used to perform these tasks. Simply changing the URL to include the iWorkflow REST Proxy root for that device could easily change all the Imperative operations we have completed in this lab to use the REST Proxy.
Perform the following steps to complete this task:
Expand the “Lab 2.5 – iWorkflow REST Proxy” folder in the Postman collection.
Click the “Step 1: Create pool on BIGIP-A”. Examine the request type, URL and JSON body. Essentially we are performing a POST to the ‘/mgmt/tm/ltm/pool’ collection on BIGIP-A. The last part of the URL includes this URI path (the part after ‘…./rest-proxy/’). The JSON body and all other parameters are passed unaltered. Also, notice that we are still using our iWorkflow Token to authenticate, not the BIG-IP one.
Click the “Send” button and examine the response.
Complete steps 2-5 for the remaining items in the “Lab 2.5 – iWorkflow REST Proxy” collection. Examine each request carefully so you understand what is happening.