I was not planning this chapter and putting away Perl for even a moment, but I have some talk with my VeriFone colleague on scripting, REST API and how creating web server which uses REST API back end to control certain parameters of firewall is not that easy and straightforward. We both have some programming and scripting experience but neither of us is a programmer. We both know more or less several programming languages but we are not proficient. But we both have (at least we thing we have) good fundamental knowledge about programming.

The topic circulated around web page that will let display and manipulate ACL entries on firewall in non-SDN data center. Feature quite simple that most independent firewall management platforms can do. The problem is that most of those applications are using CLI via SSH to send commands and parse output, that’s exactly how Cisco ASDM is working in example, but we wanted something maybe a little more flexible, reliable… We both agreed that JSON is flexible structure that should be easy to use. So how to write a comprehensive script?

Read More →