V1 of the Dashboard API: A Revamped Versioning Process for Scale

[Melissa]

We are excited to announce the official release of Version 1 (V1) of the Dashboard API! 

Over the past 2+ years, the Dashboard API has proven to be an incredibly useful toolkit for network creation, management, and monitoring. It has saved countless hours and effort for thousands of developers and network admins, by allowing them to streamline and automate workflows and build custom applications for managing IT. 

To date, we’ve added over 400 endpoints to this API service - all under “Version 0” of the Dashboard API. As part of our “API First” development strategy (creating an API endpoint for every experience in the Meraki dashboard), Meraki is producing new endpoints at record velocity. To make sure we had the processes and standards in place to keep up with this scale, we led an initiative to revamp the versioning process for this API service. This was a massive team effort that required a lot of input from our developer community - thank you to all who helped us shape this process! 

We are now excited to release Version 1 of the Dashboard API, and with it, a new standard for future versioning and endpoint releases that promotes consistency, efficiency, and (as always!) simplicity of use. As part of the V1 release, we’re providing new frameworks, documentation, libraries, CI/CD, and tons of new operations with more to come. 

We are confident V1 will dramatically improve the developer experience and be a launching off point for implementation and usage of the Dashboard API for many Meraki users! 

For more information, check out the following resources:

New API documentation

• Quickly learn about and test any API endpoint with the new interactive docs
• Easily discover resources by product or use case

Meraki Python Library

• A simple yet powerful way to program your Meraki network
  
  

Meraki Postman Collection

• A graphical tool to interact with the new API. No coding required, just point and click your way to success
  
  

Meraki OpenAPI  Specification

• New URL path and tag structure
• Monthly non-breaking releases
• 250+ changes

Finally, for a live (or on-demand) walk through, check out this upcoming webinar hosted by our friends (@theDeNap)  at DevNet! 

[PhilipDAth]

Could you get someone to do a post on meraki.cisco.com/blog/ please about this please.  I would like to publicise it further.

Also if they could include some kind of cool graphic in the post that would be great.

[Melissa]

Thanks @PhilipDAth! Here's a blog @theDeNap posted on the Cisco Developers site. I hope this helps!

Blog: Meraki Dashboard API v1 Streamlines the Developer Experience

As for cool graphics, here are few graphs on the extent of the changes v1 represents for the Dashboard API:

Scope	Changes
appliance	40
camera	5
cellularGateway	7
devices	7
insight	2
networks	33
organizations	26
sm	46
switch	35
wireless	31
Grand Total	232

Path Changes	112
New Operations	154
New Paths	57

[NolanHerring]

For those of us (all of us I imagine) that have tried and true scripts that have been running for years without any hiccups using v0, do we need to do anything to adjust to all of these updates?

[PhilipDAth]

You can keep using the v0 scripts.  To use the v1 API you'll need to re-write the scripts.

The v1 API is a lot more logically laid out.

[John_on_API]

Hi Nolan! Our v0 Deprecation & Sunset information is here:

https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/#!versioning/v0-deprecation--sunset

[PhilipDAth]

I think a sunset of February 5th, 2022 is too soon.  I think 5 years is more appropriate.

It will be interesting to know of the monitoring for the use of the v0 API as sunset approaches.

[Namgyu]

Hi, @Melissa. Thank you for providing the statistics of changes.

So I am confused with which one I will use after launching v1 of Meraki dashboard API.

I was using v0 and made some services with them, then do I have to change all of them to v1 of API?

Or do you have a plan to remove v0 of API later?

[John_on_API]

Hi @Namgyu! If you're building any net-new integrations I would highly recommend basing them on v1 so you can leverage the new improvements, including, among many other improvements, better performance in many areas, fewer calls to get more information, etc.

Most of the partners I've talked to are eager to leverage v1's improvements but are planning it according to a timeline that works for them. Depending on the app, migrating v0 apps to v1 can take some effort, but developing new apps/integrations on v1 is a no-brainer, imho.

Even so, I think you'll find the code changes for v0 to v1 migrations are fairly minimal, especially if you are using the Python SDK, which has also been updated for v1. In fact, since the SDK abstracts away most of the JSON data structures and endpoint URLs, having developed on the Python SDK greatly accelerates the migration to v1.

If you're not using the SDK, the hardest part might be adapting to the new endpoint URL structure, but once adapted, I think you'll find it more intuitive in the long run, easier to develop for, easier to onboard new developers onto, etc.

If you'd like to see a few examples of the v1-compatible SDK in action, we have published a few here: https://github.com/meraki/dashboard-api-python/tree/master/notebooks

[PraveenYadav]

hi i am facing problem 

while i see client my cpu utilization increase sharply