Validating APIs¶

Please make sure you go through this before you wonder why zmNinja is not working.¶

Assumption: Your ZM server is accessible at http://server/zm -> replace this with your actual path

Make sure ZM APIs are working:¶

(Note - nginx users, if you are facing API issues, please see if this page helps)

Step 1: Open up a browser
Step 2: Log into ZM
Step 3: Open another tab in the same browser (IMPORTANT: Has to be from the same browser you logged into ZM)
Step 4: Type in http://server/zm/api/host/getVersion.json –> you should see a response like:
```
{
"version": "1.30.0",
"apiversion": "1.0"
}
```
version/apiversion may be different. If you don’t see such a response, your APIs are not working
Step 5:make sure you can see monitors and events:

Type in http://server/zm/api/monitors.json –> you should see a response like:

{
    "monitors": [
        {
            "Monitor": {
                /*lots of additional details*/
            },
            /*more monitor objects if you have more than one*/
        }]
}

Step 6: (If you find your APIs show ok, but zmNinja has issues)
- Open a browser, log into ZM
- Open a new tab, enter http://server/zm/api/host/getVersion.json
- Now, right click and do a View Source in your browser (different browsers may have different names for it). This brings up a full source code view of the page. Do you ONLY see the JSON output or do you see gobs of HTML on top like <pre class= and lots of cake related messages? If you do, you need to fix it.

if you find the page empty, your APIs/permissions have a problem. Please post in the ZM forums (please DON’T contact me first as its not a zmNinja bug)

Type in http://server/zm/api/events.json –> you should see a response like: (this list may be an empty set if you don’t have events but you will still see the {"events":[]} text - if you find the page empty, your APIs have a problem. Please post in the ZM forums (please DON’T contact me first, as its not a zmNinja bug)

{"events":[{"Event":{ /* many more details */ }}]}

Top reasons why monitors and events API returns blank while getVersion works: * You don’t have monitor/event view permissions allocated to the user * You have an invalid camera definition (happens sometimes when you remove and re-add cameras) * If you are using non UTF8 characters in your monitor names/zone names this can cause issues. Edit /usr/share/zoneminder/www/api/app/Config/database.php (assuming ZM is in /usr/share) and make sure 'encoding' => 'utf8' is uncommented (remove //) around line 74. I’ve submitted a patch but till its merged, you might have to do it manually.

zmNinja API notes:¶

Please make sure the user credentials you use has:
view or edit access to monitors
view or edit access to streams
view or edit access to system
If you are accessing zmNinja remotely, make sure you first access ZM remotely from your desktop browser, ensure it works and then use the same DNS/IP for zmNinja