Arturo Baldo

Zabbix is an open source monitoring tool for diverse IT components, including networks, servers, virtual machines (VMs) and cloud services. It provides monitoring metrics, among others network utilization, CPU load and disk space consumption. Data can be collected in a agent-less fashion using SNMP, ICMP, or with an multi-platform agent, available for most operating systems.

Even when it is considered one of the best NMS on the market, its reporting capabilities are very limited. For example, this is an availability report created with PRTG.

And this is a Zabbix Report. There is no graphs, no data tables, and it is difficult to establish a defined time span for the data collection.

My client required an executive report with the following information.

• Host / Service Name
• Minimum SLA for ICMP echo request monitoring
• Achieved SLA for ICMP echo request monitoring
• Memory usage graph, if host is being SNMP-monitored
• Main network interface graph, if host is being SNMP-monitored
• And storage usage graph, also if the host is being SNMP-monitored
  

Using the Zabbix API

To do call the API, we need to send HTTP POST requests to the api_jsonrpc.php file located in the frontend directory. For example, if the Zabbix frontend is installed under http://company.com/zabbix, the HTTP request to call the apiinfo.version method may look like this:

POST http://company.com/zabbix/api_jsonrpc.php HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json-rpc
{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0",
    "method":"apiinfo.version",
    "id":1,
    "auth":null,
    "params":
        {
        }
}

The request must have the Content-Type header set to one of these values: application/json-rpc, application/json or application/jsonrequest.

Before access any data, it’s necessary to log in and obtain an authentication token. The user.login method is used for this.

{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "user.login",
    "params": {
        "user": "Admin",
        "password": "zabbix"
    },
    "id": 1,
    "auth": null
}

If the authentication request succeeds, the API response will look like this.

{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "result": "0424bd59b807674191e7d77572075f33",
    "id": 1
}

The result field is the authentication token, which will be sent on subsequent requests.

Instead of reinvent the wheel, let’s use a existing library to call the API.

Using jqzabbix jQuery plugin for the Zabbix API

GitHub user kodai provides a nice JavaScript client, in a form of a jQuery plugin. You can get it on https://github.com/kodai/jqzabbix.

The usage is quite forward, first, include both jQuery and jqzabbix.js on your HTML file. I using Cloudflare to link jQuery.

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js">/script>
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="jqzabbix.js"></script>

An object has to be created to initialize the client. I prefer to set url, username, and password dynamically, with data provided by the end user, so no credentials are stored here.

server = new $.jqzabbix({
	url: url,  			// URL of Zabbix API
	username: user,   	// Zabbix login user name
	password: pass,  	// Zabbix login password
	basicauth: false,   // If you use basic authentication, set true for this option
	busername: '',      // User name for basic authentication
	bpassword: '',      // Password for basic authentication
	timeout: 5000,      // Request timeout (milli second)
	limit: 1000,        // Max data number for one request
});

As told before, the first step is to authenticate with the API, and save the authorization token. This is handled by the jqzabbix library by first making a request to get the API version, and then authenticating.

server.getApiVersion();
server.userLogin();

If the authentication procedure is completed properly, the API version and authentication ID are stored as properties of the server object. The userlogin() method allows to set callbacks for both success and error.

var success = function() { console.log('Success!'); }
var error = function() { console.error('Error!'); }

server.userLogin(null, success, error)

Once authenticated, the Zabbix API methods are called in the following fashion with the sendAjaxRequest method.

server.sendAjaxRequest(method, params, success, error)

Retrieving Hosts

I set a global array hosts to store the hosts information.
Another global array called SEARCH_GROUPS is used to define which hosts groups should considered on the API request. By setting the selectHosts parameter to true, the hosts on the host groups are retrieved too on the response.

On success, the result is stored on the hosts array, and the get_graphs function is called. If there is an error, the default error callback is fired.

hosts = [];
function get_hosts() {
	// Get hosts
	server.sendAjaxRequest(
		"hostgroup.get",
		{
			"selectHosts": true,
			"filter": {
				"name": SEARCH_GROUPS
			}
		},
		function (e) {
			e.result.forEach(group => {
				group.hosts.forEach(host => {
					hosts.push(host);
				});
			});
			get_graphs();
		},
		error,
	);
}

Retrieving Graphs

Previously, user defined graphs were configured on Zabbix, to match the client requeriments of specific information. All names for the graphs that should be included on the report were terminated the ” – Report” suffix.

This function retrieves all those graphs, and by setting the selectHosts to true, the hosts linked to each graph are retrieved too.

On success, the result is stored on the graphs array, and the render function is called. If there is an error, the default error callback is fired.

graphs = [];
function get_graphs() {
	server.sendAjaxRequest(
		"graph.get",
		{
			"selectHosts": "*",
			"search": {
				name: "- Report"
			}
		},
		function (e) {
			graphs = e.result;
			render();
		},
		error
	)
}

Retrieving Graphs Images Instead of Graph Data

By this time you should have noticed that the Zabbix API allows to retrieve values for the graphs, but no images. An additional PHP file will be stored with the HTML and JS files, as a helper to call the web interface by using php_curl.

You can get it on https://zabbix.org/wiki/Get_Graph_Image_PHP. I made a couple modifications to it in order to pass username and password on the URL query, with parameters for the graph ID, the timespan, and the image dimensions.

<?php
//////////
// GraphImgByID v1.1 
// (c) Travis Mathis - [email protected]
// It's free use it however you want.
// ChangeLog:
// 1/23/12 - Added width and height to GetGraph Function
// 23/7/13 - Zabbix 2.0 compatibility
// ERROR REPORTING
error_reporting(E_ALL);
set_time_limit(1800);


$graph_id = filter_input(INPUT_GET,'id');
$period= filter_input(INPUT_GET,'period');
$width= filter_input(INPUT_GET,'width');
$height = filter_input(INPUT_GET,'height');
$user = filter_input(INPUT_GET,'user');
$pass = filter_input(INPUT_GET,'pass');

//CONFIGURATION
$z_server = 'zabbix_url'; //set your URL here
$z_user = $user;
$z_pass = $pass;
$z_img_path = "/usr/local/share/zabbix/custom_pages/tmp_images/";

//NON CONFIGURABLE
$z_tmp_cookies = "";
$z_url_index = $z_server . "index.php";
$z_url_graph = $z_server . "chart2.php";
$z_url_api = $z_server . "api_jsonrpc.php";

// Zabbix 1.8
// $z_login_data  = "name=" .$z_user ."&password=" .$z_pass ."&enter=Enter";
// Zabbix 2.0
$z_login_data = array('name' => $z_user, 'password' => $z_pass, 'enter' => "Sign in");

// FUNCTION
function GraphImageById($graphid, $period = 3600, $width, $height) {
    global $z_server, $z_user, $z_pass, $z_tmp_cookies, $z_url_index, $z_url_graph, $z_url_api, $z_img_path, $z_login_data;
    // file names
    $filename_cookie = $z_tmp_cookies . "zabbix_cookie_" . $graphid . ".txt";
    $image_name = $z_img_path . "zabbix_graph_" . $graphid . ".png";

    //setup curl
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $z_url_index);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $z_login_data);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $filename_cookie);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $filename_cookie);
    // login
    curl_exec($ch);
    // get graph
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $z_url_graph . "?graphid=" . $graphid . "&width=" . $width . "&height=" . $height . "&period=" . $period);
    $output = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    // delete cookie
    header("Content-type: image/png");
    unlink($filename_cookie);
    /*
      $fp = fopen($image_name, 'w');
      fwrite($fp, $output);
      fclose($fp);
      header("Content-type: text/html");
     */
    return $output;
}

echo GraphImageById($graph_id, $period, $width, $height);

Quick and Dirty Frontend

You should be able to customize this small frontend to your needs.

<html>

<head>
	<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/chota@latest">
	<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
	<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/js-cookie@2/src/js.cookie.min.js"></script>
	<script src="jqzabbix.js"></script>
	<style>
		.host-container {
			margin-bottom: 3em;
		}
		@media print {
			.host-container {
				page-break-before: auto;
				page-break-after: auto;
				page-break-inside: avoid;
			}
			img {
				display: block;
				page-break-before: auto;
				page-break-after: auto;
				page-break-inside: avoid;
			}
		}
	</style>
</head>

<body>
	<div id="container" class="container">

		<div class="row" style="margin-bottom: 3em">
			<div class="col">
				<h2>Services and Availability Report</h2>
				<table id="table" class="bg-dark">
					<thead>
						<th>Host Name</th>
						<th>Target</th>
						<th class="is-text-center">Availibilty</th>
						<th class="is-text-center">Availabilty Status</th>
						<th class="is-text-center">Total Availability</th>
					</thead>
				</table>
			</div>
		</div>


		<div id="template" style="display: none">
			<div class="host-container">
				<div class="row bg-dark">
					<div class="col-12">
						<span id="host-HOST_ID-name">Service Name</span>
					</div>
				</div>
				<div class="row bg-light">
					<div class="col-3">
						Status
					</div>
					<div class="col-3">
						SLA Minimum
					</div>
					<div class="col-3">
						SLA
					</div>
				</div>
				<div class="row bg-primary">
					<div class="col-3">
						<span id="host-HOST_ID-status"></span>OK</span>
					</div>
					<div class="col-3">
						<span id="host-HOST_ID-sla"></span>99.9%
					</div>
					<div class="col-3">
						<span id="host-HOST_ID-sla-value"></span>100%
					</div>
				</div>
				<div class="row is-text-center" id="host-HOST_ID-graphs">
				</div>
			</div>
		</div>

	</div>

	<script src="ui.js"></script>

</body>

</html>

Result

The final page is a complete report, including a briefing table which resumes the services status and SLA compliance.