(This post refers to SoftLayer API version 1. Check out API version 3 for our latest updates.)

I think we on the SLDN development team have it pretty lucky. You can’t beat developing at a datacenter where there are umpteen, wonderful servers to test your code on. Need to reboot a box? Sure! Go for it! After all, it’s just a quick phone call to the datacenter to bring it back online if your test code broke something. In the mean time there are plenty of other boxes to test on. Sure that’s great for us, but it can get hairy if you only have one or two systems to test with. While our sales droids would have you fix that by ordering more servers we on the dev team just implemented a tried and true code test mechanism, the sandbox! Wait, I mean this sandbox!

Our API sandbox is a way for you to safely test sensitive methods without affecting your servers. Method calls from the sandbox will return accurate return data without actually affecting your services or SoftLayer services. Most of our methods are simple get methods; those still work exactly the same. More fun methods like rebootServer() will not reboot your server if called from our sandbox, but will return the same response to your app as if they did.

To use the API sandbox change the API entry point server in your code to api-sandbox.service.softlayer.com. That’s it! Use the same methods and parameters that you’d normally call. The sandbox works on both the XML-RPC and SOAP interfaces. When you’re done testing point your API calls back to api.service.softlayer.com to return to normal functionality.

As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions. Let us know what you think on our forums. See you next time!

(This post refers to SoftLayer API version 1. Check out API version 3 for our latest updates.)

We’ve put four new methods into the API. They are:

getInvoiceList()
Return a listing for each account that includes the invoice id, date, starting balance, ending balance, invoice amount, payment amount, and account type.

getAccountBalance()
Return the current balance and next bill date for an account.

getInvoice(intInvoiceId)
Retrieve a copy of an invoice in PDF format.

And by request:

getServerCost(strServerIdentifier)
Return the “Total cost of a single server.”

Keep’em comin’, epratt!

By the way, users running each of these methods must have the “View Account Summary” priviledge. You should not have any problem if you can access the accounting tools in the portal.

(This post refers to SoftLayer API version 1. Check out API version 3 for our latest updates.)

We’ve added a new feature to the
Softlayer API: getIPaddressDetails. For a given IP address, this method will retrieve the parent subnet, VLAN identifier, IP address which it is routed to and the name of the server it’s routed to. Instead of using the customer portal and typing in a slew of IP addresses one by one into the public network ip search page, simply call this IP for each IP address, saving you time and typing. It’s incredibly useful for tracking down your secondary IPs.

getIPaddressDetails(strIPaddress)
Retreive subnet and server details for given IP Address

This new method is available via both SOAP and XML-RPC interface.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this new feature. Feel free to provide any comments and recommendations for improvements on this new API.

(This post refers to SoftLayer API version 1. Check out API version 3 for our latest updates.)

Ask…

And you shall receive…

The newest addition to the API methods has been released and is now available for use. We have improved upon the Portal’s monitoring features by adding just a little more data. In addition to receiving the number of servers that are up, recovering, and down, the new function also returns an array with specific details about the servers that are down. This includes: SERVER_NAME, ID, PUBLIC_IP, PRIVATE_IP, and TIME_FIRST_DOWN, which as requested is “the time that the monitoring system first detected that it was down”.

getServerStatus()
Retreive a server status of UP DOWN or RECOVERING for a given account id.

The new method is available through our SOAP and XML-RPC interfaces. Okay, so we didn’t quite give you exactly what you asked for, we gave you more!