Nominated Discussion: Using the REST API to Create a Bunch of Address Objects

[kiwi]

This Nominated Discussion Article is based on the post "Using the REST API to create a bunch of Address Objects" by @DaveFitz  and responded to by @TomYoung . Read on to see the discussion and solution!

I have to create a large number Address Objects and would like to use the REST API to do so.  I've seen a number of examples at adding various things, but I'm running into an issue with these specific shared objects.  The all live in a device group called Global.

If I do a GET, I see that an object will look as follows

{"@name":"net-vl730-boise", "@location":"shared", "ip-netmask":"10.21.45.0\/24", "description":"Boise VTC Network"}

Am I correct in assuming that when interacting with an object, a field with a leading @ is a required field?

I basically want to have code that creates ~100 more of these.  To that end, I have a code snippet that looks as follows:

headers = {
  'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  'X-PAN-KEY': api_key
  }
name = "net-vl720-miami"
ip_netmask = "10.22.104.0\/22"
payload = json.dumps({
    "entry":{
        "@location":"shared",
        "@name":"net-vl720-miami",
        "ip-netmask":"10.21.46.0\/24",
        "description":"Miami Voice Network"
        }
    })
url = "https://panorama_ip/restapi/v10.1/Objects/Addresses"
try:
    r1 = requests.request("POST",url, headers=headers, data=payload, verify=False)
except:
    print(r1.text)

When I run the code as is, the response I get is:

'{"code":3,"message":"Missing Query Parameter: location","details":[{"@type":"CauseInfo","causes":[{"code":7,"module":"pan_api","description":"Missing Query Parameter: location"}]}]}'

If I alter the URL to include the location, as so:

url = "https://w0t809-pan-mgmt.mitre.org/restapi/v10.1/Objects/Addresses?location=shared"

The description part of the response becomes:

"description":"Missing Query Parameter: name"

So for starters, I'm not sure what belongs in the URL, and what belongs in the payload, as some of the data seems to be duplicated. 

If I add the name to the URL:

url = "https://w0t809-pan-mgmt.mitre.org/restapi/v10.1/Objects/Addresses?location=shared&name=" + name

The response changes to

"description":"Invalid Object: Edit breaks config validity."

 Can anybody share what I'm doing wrong?  I'm sure I'm not the first person to attempt this.

This is what worked for me in Postman.

URL = https://{{hostname}}.{{domain}}.com/restapi/v10.2/Objects/Addresses?location=shared&name=Test-1-2-3

Body = 
{
    "entry": [
        {
            "@location": "shared",
            "@name": "Test-1-2-3",
            "ip-netmask": "10.21.46.0/24",
            "tag": {
                "member": [
                    "API"
                ]
            },
            "description": "Miami Voice Network"
        }
    ]
}

Response =
{
    "@status": "success",
    "@code": "20",
    "msg": "command succeeded"
}

The name needs to be in the URL according to this example:  https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/pan-os/9-1/pan-os-panorama-api/get-started-with-the-pan-os-rest-ap...

My "API" tag already existed.  Here is the newly created object in the Panorama GUI: