API calls to get config from Panorama (object, object groups, policies etc.)

[Sly_Cooper]

How can I get device group specific policies as well as shared object, object groups etc. from the Panorama. I tried with API browser and cli (with debug cli on) but could not find specific path/command. I have checked the xml running config and can see the path however not sure how to use it and the type of operation. Thanks in advance!

[gfreeman]

At this point, there are multiple ways to get and configure the firewall and Panorama without building a framework from scratch:

High level integrations:

* Ansible - http://panwansible.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

* Terraform - https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/panos/index.html

Programatic integrations:

* pandevice (python) - https://github.com/PaloAltoNetworks/pandevice

Technically there's also pango (which Terraform support is built on), but that code should be considered alpha, as it sometimes makes breaking changes, so I wouldn't recommend using it directly right now.

[Sly_Cooper]

@gfreeman Can I use Terraform or Ansible purely for getting data (no updating)? I am using Python with pan-python now.

[gfreeman]

To some extent yes.  Ansible has facts and Terraform has data sources.  If you give me a bit more info on what kind of data you'd want, I can be more specific..?

In addition to that, pan-python is a good library (it's what pandevice is built on top of).  pandevice functions very differently from pan-python, however if you're already not afraid of the API, maybe pandevice could be a good path forward.

[nbilal]

Hey Sly!

While the pan-python/pandevice and Ansible/Terraform frameworks really handy, for doing something as simple as pulling information from the Panorama/firewall config I tend to prefer rolling my own. In particular using the xmltodict module and then navigating the config as a Python dictionary can be much more intuitive and pythonic as you build out your program. Here's a sample function you can use for pulling in the Panorama configuration (in Python 3.6.5):

import requests
import xmltodict

def get_config(ip: str, api_key: str) -> dict:
    try:
        api_call_dict = {
            'key': api_key,
            'type': 'config',
            'action': 'get',
            'xpath': f"/config"
        }
        url = f"https://{ip}/api"
        response = requests.post(url, api_call_dict, verify=False)
        parsed_response = xmltodict.parse(response.text)
        panorama_config = parsed_response['response']['result']['config']
        return panorama_config
    except BaseException as be:
        print(f"get_config() failed due to {be}.")
        return {}

You could then access the shared address objects by running the function like this:

pano_ip = '10.1.1.1'
pano_api_key = 'ABCDEFKEY'
pano_cfg = get_config(pano_ip, pano_api_key)
print(pano_cfg['shared']['address'])

Hope that helps!

Nasir