Over the last few months, we’ve built, updated and pushed hundreds of virtual appliances.
During that time, the most troublesome process had always been updates.
To make this easier, we’ve released a first version of a REST API for the Jidoteki Admin.
The goal of the API is to simplify the update process and management of the virtual appliance. It is now possible to perform updates, manage network settings and upgrade a license with a simple curl call.
It is deployed as a wrapper of the management scripts provider by the jidoteki-admin.
The REST API is extremely simple, and ships with the API documentation (formatted beautifully thanks to strapdownjs). This means the end-user can access the API docs without internet access. It also means the docs will always match the API version they currently have deployed.
We released the API under the MPL-2.0 license. It is written in a relatively unknown, yet extremely lightweight, powerful, and fun language called PicoLisp. The obvious advantage is it can run on any *nix operating system in a self-contained environment requiring very minimal resources (~1MB of memory, ~4MB disk space).
In releasing this open source REST API, we hope to encourage more people to build and deploy on-premises virtual appliances using our technology and expertise.
As we’ve transitioned to a fully-managed Jidoteki service, we’ve taken the time to integrate the REST API into our provisioning process as well. Choosing to “Install the Jidoteki Admin” will include the API by default.
As usual, feel free to contact us or email us for advice and consulting, and for help building your on-premises virtual appliance.