Output format for test/url-info-cloud and test/url-info-host

[rickyboone]

So I had a crazy idea and started poking around at the XML API on my firewall.  I wanted to see if there was a generally efficient way to automate a query against PAN-DB.  Seems straightforward enought; either test/url-info-cloud or test/url-info-host (depending on whether I want to check the MP cache or against the cloud... though I'm not sure if there are limitations for the latter, such as what WildFire's API has).  I realize there's a public web interface for this check, but that's not what I'm looking for.  I'm trying to automate a process.

What I'm not sure about is the formatting of the response/output.  For example, submitting the following against url-info-cloud for google.com returns an interesting response:

<test><url-info-cloud>google.com</url-info-cloud></test>

<response cmd="status" status="success"><result>BM:
google.com,9,5,search-engines
...
BM:
...
</result></response>

(I've limited the output intentionally... not sure about how sensitive PA is to this)

And querying the same against url-info-host:

<test><url-info-host>google.com</url-info-host></test>

<response cmd="status" status="success"><result>Ancestors info:

BM:
google.com,1,5,search-engines,,

Descendants info:
wallet.google.com,1,5,financial-services,,
...
</result></response>

I'm expecting some differences between url-info-cloud and url-info-host due to PAN-DB's design, but I'm not sure what the all of the output means, other than the obvious stuff.  Strings like "BM:" and ",9,5," in url-info-cloud don't appear to have any corresponding documentation to explain their meaning.  The same goes for "Anscestors info:", "Decendants info:", ",1,5,", and the ",," at the end of the individual result.

When parsing out this response, should these strings and values mean something?

[mivaldi · Accepted solution]

BM stands for Best Match, and the first numerical value you see is a Best Match code. The exact meaning of the BM code was not shared with me, but it is only relevant to Palo Alto Networks for debugging purposes.

The second numerical value is an expiration code obtained from the cloud meant to tell set the MP/DP cache timeout, The expiration code can range in value from 1 to 5.

1 == Never expire

2 == 7 days

3 == 1 day

4 == 1 hour

5 == 30 minutes