Qlik Sense on Windows - API - How to get apps list and data load script?

[LDR]

Hi Qlikers,

First at all I have to apologyze if I'm asking something too easy, at this moment it isn't for me. I'm trying to learn from zero how to use QS APIs and everything is new for me.

My goal is to create an external script in order to obtain a list of apps from my QS environment and for each one, I want to get the content that you can see via Data Load Editor, the reason is because I want to know the different data sources that any app is using (QVDs, Excel files, tables from any database, etc.).

I was able to do something similar developing a Qlik app but now I want to obtain this data via API. My first tests were using PowerShell. Let me show you my example:

$hdrs = @{}
$hdrs.Add("X-Qlik-xrfkey","12345678qwertyui")
$hdrs.Add("X-Qlik-User","UserDirectory=DOMAIN; UserId=USER1")
$cert = Get-ChildItem -Path "Cert:\CurrentUser\My" | Where {$_.Subject -like '*QlikClient*'}
$url = "https://QSHOST:4242/qrs/about?xrfkey=12345678qwertyui"
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $url -Method Get -Headers $hdrs -Certificate $cert

It worked for me returning the output below:

The next step is to obtain the list of apps so I think that I need to change the method-type to POST, I mean something like that:

$body = '{
"UserDirectory": "DOMAIN",
"UserId": "USER1",
"Attributes": [
{
"name": "GETAPPLIST",
"handle": "-1",
"method": "GetDocList",
"params": []
}
]
}'
$hdrs = @{}
$hdrs.Add("X-Qlik-xrfkey","12345678qwertyui")
$hdrs.Add("X-Qlik-User","UserDirectory=DOMAIN;UserId=USER1")
$cert = Get-ChildItem -Path "Cert:\CurrentUser\My" | Where {$_.Subject -like '*QlikClient*'}
$url = "https://QSHOST:4242/qrs/about?xrfkey=12345678qwertyui"
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $url -Method Post -Body $body -ContentType 'application/json' -Headers $hdrs -Certificate $cert

In this case the result I'm obtaining is the next below:

So, my questions are:

- Is it possible to do what I want via PowerShell? Can you show me any example? else what developing language you recommend me?

Thanks for your time 😉

[Øystein_Kolsrud · Accepted solution]

The GetDocList endpoint is part of the engine API which is not a REST API. The engine API is instead based on JSON RPC over websockets to make it more interactive, which means you will have to connect a websocket to the engine and send your messages there.

I don't have too much experience with doing this in PowerShell (as I typically turn to C# when doing stuff like this), but it's certainly possible to do so. This thread should give you some pointers as to how to proceed:

https://community.qlik.com/t5/Integration-Extension-APIs/edit-script-load-editor-with-net-SDK/td-p/1...

[rzenere_avvale]

Hey there @LDR ,

To obtain such information via Powershell, I would recommend Qlik-Cli-Windows
It already has many pre-configured functions, like the one to extract the list of applications in your environment

For the script... As far as I know, there is no API that you can call from Powershell to obtain it; probably you would need to take a look at Engine APIs
Otherwise, through Powershell you should be able to require the logs of an application

I hope this helps,
Riccardo 

[LDR]

Hi Oystein,

If you'd have to query the app  list we have and get the script for each app what would be your approach? I mean, would you use C#? According your answer, can you tell me how is configured your developing environment?

I'm asking you that becase I want to use the right tools for obtaining the data I need.

Best regards

[LDR]

Hi @rzenere_avvale 

I have to ask you the same than to @Øystein_Kolsrud . If you would have to obtain the data I want how would you do it?

Please, forget Powershell option. If I have to use C#, Java, Python, etc. I'll do it but I want to learn how it has to be done.

Thanks 

[Øystein_Kolsrud]

I'm not sure I understand exactly what end result you want, but if you want to access the scripts of all apps, then you could use an approach like the one below. It relies on the Qlik Sense .NET SDK for engine API access and QlikSenseRestClient for REST access.

// Get list of app IDs through REST endpoint.
var client = new RestClient(url);
client.AsApiKeyViaQcs(key);
var appItems = client.Get<JObject>($"/api/v1/items?resourceType=app")["data"].OfType<JObject>().ToArray();
var appIds = appItems.Select(item => item["resourceId"].Value<string>());

// Get scripts for apps.
var location = QcsLocation.FromUri(url);
location.AsApiKey(key);

foreach (var appId in appIds)
{
    using var app = location.App(appId, noData: true);
    var script = app.GetScript();
    Console.WriteLine($"{appId} script length: {script.Length}");
}

 The two libraries are both available from NuGet:

https://www.nuget.org/packages/QlikSense.NetSDK/
https://www.nuget.org/packages/QlikSenseRestClient/

But if you are looking for ways to list data sources for apps, then you might want to have a look at the lineage endpoint to see if that gives you the information you need:

https://qlik.dev/apis/rest/apps/#%23%2Fentries%2Fv1%2Fapps%2F-appId%2Fdata%2Flineage-get

[Øystein_Kolsrud]

Oh, sorry... Just realized the question concerned Client Managed, not QCS. In that case you could do something like this:

var location = Location.FromUri(url);
var certs = CertificateManager.LoadCertificateFromStore();
location.AsDirectConnection("INTERNAL", "sa_api", certs, false);

var appIds = location.GetAppIdentifiers();
foreach (var appId in appIds)
{
    using var app = location.App(appId, noData: true);
    var script = app.GetScript();
    Console.WriteLine($"{appId.AppId} script length: {script.Length}");
}

And I think you should be able to get lineage data from the engine. I haven't really experimented with that feature yet tough. But you could try something like this:

var lineage = app.GetLineage();
Console.WriteLine(string.Join(Environment.NewLine, lineage.Select(l => l.Discriminator)));

[jcartermd]

Thank you @Øystein_Kolsrud that was very helpful. I'm also starting with almost 0 knowledge of APIs and C# and had an identical request for QSE on Windows. 

I combined the above loop example with Qlik Sense: Getting started with the .NET SDK - Qlik Community - 1716231 and Qlik Sense: How to export app scripts - Qlik Community - 1717436 (and a little Stack Overflow) to end up with the C# code below, which worked out. 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.IO;
using Qlik;
using Qlik.Engine;

namespace ConsoleAppQlik
{
    internal class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            FileStream ostrm;
            StreamWriter writer;
            TextWriter oldOut = Console.Out;
            Uri uri = new Uri("https://qlikserver3.domain.local/"); //change to your server URL
            ILocation location = Qlik.Engine.Location.FromUri(uri);
            //location.AsNtlmUserViaProxy(proxyUsesSsl: true);
            using (var hub = location.Hub())
            {
                var appIds = location.GetAppIdentifiers();
                foreach (var appId in appIds)
                {
                    var app = location.App(appId, noData: true);
                    var script = app.GetScript();
                    Console.WriteLine($"{appId.AppName} - {appId.AppId} script length: {script.Length}");
                    try
                    {
                        //places files in C:\Users\Your_Name\source\repos\ConsoleAppQlik\ConsoleAppQlik\bin\Debug
                        ostrm = new FileStream($"./{DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy-dd-M--HH-mm")} - {appId.AppName}.txt", FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Write);
                        writer = new StreamWriter(ostrm);
                    }
                    catch (Exception e)
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine("Cannot open Redirect.txt for writing");
                        Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
                        return;
                    }
                    Console.SetOut(writer);
                    Console.WriteLine(script);
                    Console.SetOut(oldOut);
                    writer.Close();
                    ostrm.Close();
                    Console.WriteLine($"{appId.AppName} script export complete.");
                };
                Console.WriteLine("Press enter to close...");
                Console.ReadLine();
            }
        }
    }
}

[LDR]

HI @Øystein_Kolsrud  and @rzenere_avvale 

Thanks a lot for your examples. I couldn't test them yet because my environment (MS Visual Stucio) is claiming when I try to execute. That's something that I have to solve firtst.

On the other hand, I'd like to ask you if you know how to do the same with Python or Java without using QLIKSense.NetSDK package. Else, don't worry, your help was great.

Thanks

[Øystein_Kolsrud]

There are no official libraries available for Java, but for JavaScript you can use Enigma:

https://help.qlik.com/en-US/sense-developer/August2022/Subsystems/APIs/Content/Sense_ClientAPIs/enig...

There's also the platform-sdk where you have Python support, but that's primarily intended for QCS. I don't know if it's possible to also use it for client managed:

https://qlik.dev/libraries-and-tools/platform-sdk