How to use Bonita BPM 6 Web REST API in Python: create accounts

Blog
1

This tutorial shows how to use the web REST API provided by Bonita BPM 6 in order to create new accounts in Python. You need to have a working Bonita BPM 6 to test the code below. This can be done with Bonita BPM Studio after deploying Bonita BPM Portal.
This example is run on a Linux distribution (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS).
The official documentation is available here http://documentation.bonitasoft.com/web-rest-api
Note: I'm not a Python developer and there are always many ways to accomplish the same thing. Don't hesitate to improve this example!

Useful modules

The following Python modules will be helpful:

  • argparse
  • httplib2
  • json
  • urllib

Authentication

Before going further, log in and retrieve the corresponding cookie. You can do it this way:

def portal_login(url,username,password,disable_cert_validation):
    http = httplib2.Http(disable_ssl_certificate_validation=disable_cert_validation)
    API="/loginservice"
    URL=url+API
    body={'username': username, 'password': password, 'redirect': 'false'}
    headers={"Content-type":"application/x-www-form-urlencoded"}
    response, content = http.request(URL,'POST',headers=headers,body=urllib.urlencode(body))
    if response.status!=200:
      raise Exception("HTTP STATUS: "+str(response.status))
    return response['set-cookie']

If you run the Bonita BPM Portal from Studio, you can use these parameters:

  • url=http://localhost:8080/bonita
  • login=walter.bates
  • password=bpm

disable_cert_validation should be set to false by default.  It's useful only for test purposes, when we use a self-signed certificate.

Create a user

Use the following function to create a user using the previous cookie:

def create_user(url,cookie,username,password,firstname,lastname,disable_cert_validation):
    http = httplib2.Http(disable_ssl_certificate_validation=disable_cert_validation)
    API="/API/identity/user/"
    URL=url+API
    headers={"Content-type":"application/json",'Cookie': cookie}
    data={"userName":username,"password":password,"firstname":firstname,"lastname":lastname, "enabled": "true"}
    data = json.dumps(data)
    response, content = http.request(URL, 'POST',headers=headers, body=data)
    if response.status!=200:
      raise Exception("HTTP STATUS: "+str(response.status)+" "+content)
    else:
      data = json.loads(content)
      return data['id']

Add a user to a profile

Retrieve a profile id

This function return the profile id, this way we can search for both Administrator and User profile:

def get_profile_id(url,cookie,name,disable_cert_validation):
    http = httplib2.Http(disable_ssl_certificate_validation=disable_cert_validation)
    API="/API/userXP/profile"
    params="?f=name="+str(name)
    URL=url+API+params
    headers={"Content-type":"application/x-www-form-urlencoded",'Cookie': cookie}
    response, content = http.request(URL, 'GET',headers=headers)
    data = json.loads(content)
    try:
      return data[0]['id']
    except Exception, e:
      return None

Link the user to a profile

This last function permits to link the user previously created using its id and the profile id retrieved before:

def add_user_to_profile(url,cookie,uid,pid,disable_cert_validation):
    http = httplib2.Http(disable_ssl_certificate_validation=disable_cert_validation)
    API="/API/userXP/profileMember/"
    URL=url+API
    headers={"Content-type":"application/json",'Cookie': cookie}
    data={"profile_id":pid,"member_type":"USER","user_id": uid}
    data = json.dumps(data)
    response, content = http.request(URL, 'POST',headers=headers, body=data)
    if response.status!=200:
      raise Exception("HTTP STATUS: "+str(response.status)+" "+content)

Full example

You can download a full example here: create_bonita_account.py

usage: create_bonita_account.py --login install --password install --url
                                http://example.com:8080/bonita --new_login
                                john.smith --new_password mysecret --firstname
                                John --lastname Smith [-h]
                                [--disable_ssl_certificate_validation]
                                [--is_admin]

Create a Bonita account

required arguments:
  --login install       Account used to authenticate you on Bonita
  --password install    Password used with your account
  --url http://example.com:8080/bonita
                        Bonita BPM url
  --new_login john.smith
                        New account that will be created
  --new_password mysecret
                        Password used for the new account
  --firstname John      First name used for the new account
  --lastname Smith      Last name used for the new account

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            Show this help message and exit
  --disable_ssl_certificate_validation
                        Used this only for tests with a self-signed
                        certificate
  --is_admin            Assign user to Administrator profile

To create a new account with the Administrator profile, you can launch a command like:

./create_bonita_account.py --login walter.bates --password bpm --url http://localhost:8080/bonita --new_login john.smith --new_password pass --firstname John --lastname Smith --is_admin

If you use an url in https with a self-signed certificate, it may raise this error:

httplib2.SSLHandshakeError: [Errno 1] _ssl.c:504: error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed

You can avoid this verification (for test only!) using the parameter "--disable_ssl_certificate_validation".