apprise-api/README.md

Apprise API

Take advantage of Apprise through your network with a user-friendly API.

• Send notifications to more than 100+ services.
• An incredibly lightweight gateway to Apprise.
• A production ready micro-service at your disposal.
• A Simple Website to verify and test your configuration with.

Apprise API was designed to easily fit into existing (and new) eco-systems that are looking for a simple notification solution.

Screenshots

There is a small built-in Configuration Manager that can be optionally accessed through your web browser allowing you to create and save as many configurations as you'd like. Each configuration is differentiated by a unique {KEY} that you decide on:

Below is a screenshot of how you can assign your Apprise URLs to your {KEY}. You can define both TEXT or YAML Apprise configurations.

Once you've saved your configuration, you'll be able to use the Notification tab to send your messages to one or more of the services you defined in your configuration. You can use the tag all to notify all of your services regardless of what tag had otherwise been assigned to them.

At the end of the day, the GUI just simply offers a user friendly interface to the same API developers can directly interface with if they wish to.

Installation

The following options should allow you to access the API at: http://localhost:8000/ from your browser.

Using dockerhub you can do the following:

# Retrieve container
docker pull caronc/apprise:latest

# Start it up:
# /config is used for a persistent store, you do not have to mount
#         this if you don't intend to use it.
# /plugin is used for a location you can add your own custom apprise plugins.
#         You do not have to mount this if you don't intend to use it.
# /attach is used for file attachments
docker run --name apprise \
   -p 8000:8000 \
   -v /var/lib/apprise/config:/config \
   -v /var/lib/apprise/plugin:/plugin \
   -v /var/lib/apprise/attach:/attach \
   -d caronc/apprise:latest

You can also choose to build yourself a custom version after checking out the source code. This is sometimes useful when you want to make a change to the source code and try it out. A common change one might make is to update the Dockerfile to point to the master branch of Apprise instead of using the stable version.

# Setup your environment the way you like
docker build -t apprise/local:latest -f Dockerfile .

# Launch your instance
docker run --name apprise \
   -p 8000:8000 \
   -d  apprise/local:latest

A docker-compose.yml file is already set up to grant you an instant production ready simulated environment:

# Docker Compose
docker-compose up

Config Directory Permissions

Under the hood, An NginX services is reading/writing your configuration files as the user (and group) www-data which generally has the id of 33. In preparation so that you don't get the error: An error occured saving configuration. consider also setting up your local /var/lib/apprise/config permissions as:

# Create a user/group (if one doesn't already exist) owned
# by the user and group id of 33
id 33 &>/dev/null || sudo useradd \
   --system --no-create-home --shell /bin/false \
    -u 33 -g 33 www-data

# Securely set the directory limiting access to only those who
# are part of the www-data group:
sudo chmod 770 -R /var/lib/apprise/config
sudo chown 33:33 -R /var/lib/apprise/config

# Now optionally add yourself to the group if you wish to be able to view
# contents.
sudo usermod -a -G 33 $(whoami)

# You may need to log out and back in again for the above usermod
# to reflect on you.  Alternatively you can just type the following
# and it will work as a temporary solution:
sudo su - $(whoami)

Alternatively a dirty solution is to just set the directory with full read/write permissions (which is not ideal in a production environment):

# Grant full permission to the local directory you're saving your
# Apprise configuration to:
chmod 777 /var/lib/apprise/config

Dockerfile Details

The following architectures are supported: amd64, arm/v7, and arm64. The following tags can be used:

• latest: Points to the latest stable build.
• edge: Points to the last push to the master branch.

Apprise URLs

📣 In order to trigger a notification, you first need to define one or more Apprise URLs to support the services you wish to leverage. Visit https://github.com/caronc/apprise/wiki to see the ever-growing list of the services supported today.

API Details

Stateless Solution

Some people may wish to only have a sidecar solution that does require use of any persistent storage. The following API endpoint can be used to directly send a notification of your choice to any of the supported services by Apprise without any storage based requirements:

Path	Method	Description
/notify/	POST	Sends one or more notifications to the URLs identified as part of the payload, or those identified in the environment variable APPRISE_STATELESS_URLS. Payload Parameters 📌 urls: One or more URLs identifying where the notification should be sent to. If this field isn't specified then it automatically assumes the settings.APPRISE_STATELESS_URLS value or APPRISE_STATELESS_URLS environment variable. 📌 body: Your message body. This is a required field. 📌 title: Optionally define a title to go along with the body. 📌 type: Defines the message type you want to send as. The valid options are info, success, warning, and failure. If no type is specified then info is the default value used. 📌 format: Optionally identify the text format of the data you're feeding Apprise. The valid options are text, markdown, html. The default value if nothing is specified is text.

Here is a stateless example of how one might send a notification (using /notify/):

# Send your notifications directly
curl -X POST -d 'urls=mailto://user:pass@gmail.com&body=test message' \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# Send a notification with an attachment
curl -X POST \
    -F 'urls=mailto://user:pass@gmail.com' \
    -F 'body=test message' \
    -F attach=@Screenshot-1.png \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# Send multiple attachments; just make sure the attach keyword is unique:
curl -X POST \
    -F 'urls=mailto://user:pass@gmail.com' \
    -F 'body=test message' \
    -F attach1=@Screenshot-1.png \
    -F attach2=@/my/path/to/Apprise.doc \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# This example shows how you can place the body among other parameters
# in the GET parameter and not the payload as another option.
curl -X POST -d 'urls=mailto://user:pass@gmail.com&body=test message' \
    -F @/path/to/your/attachment \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# The body is not required if an attachment is provided:
curl -X POST -d 'urls=mailto://user:pass@gmail.com' \
    -F @/path/to/your/attachment \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# Send your notifications directly using JSON
curl -X POST -d '{"urls": "mailto://user:pass@gmail.com", "body":"test message"}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

You can also send notifications that are URLs. Apprise will download the item so that it can send it along to all end points that should be notified about it.

# Use the 'attachment' parameter and send along a web request
curl -X POST \
    -F 'urls=mailto://user:pass@gmail.com' \
    -F attachment=https://i.redd.it/my2t4d2fx0u31.jpg \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# To send more then one URL, the following would work:
curl -X POST \
    -F 'urls=mailto://user:pass@gmail.com' \
    -F attachment=https://i.redd.it/my2t4d2fx0u31.jpg \
    -F attachment=https://path/to/another/remote/file.pdf \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# Finally feel free to mix and match local files with external ones:
curl -X POST \
    -F 'urls=mailto://user:pass@gmail.com' \
    -F attachment=https://i.redd.it/my2t4d2fx0u31.jpg \
    -F attachment=https://path/to/another/remote/file.pdf \
    -F @/path/to/your/local/file/attachment \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

Persistent Storage Solution

You can pre-save all of your Apprise configuration and/or set of Apprise URLs and associate them with a {KEY} of your choosing. Once set, the configuration persists for retrieval by the apprise CLI tool or any other custom integration you've set up. The built in website with comes with a user interface that you can use to leverage these API calls as well. Those who wish to build their own application around this can use the following API end points:

Path	Method	Description
/add/{KEY}	POST	Saves Apprise Configuration (or set of URLs) to the persistent store. Payload Parameters 📌 urls: Define one or more Apprise URL(s) here. Use a comma and/or space to separate one URL from the next. 📌 config: Provide the contents of either a YAML or TEXT based Apprise configuration. 📌 format: This field is only required if you've specified the config parameter. Used to tell the server which of the supported (Apprise) configuration types you are passing. Valid options are text and yaml. This path does not work if APPRISE_CONFIG_LOCK is set.
/del/{KEY}	POST	Removes Apprise Configuration from the persistent store. This path does not work if APPRISE_CONFIG_LOCK is set.
/get/{KEY}	POST	Returns the Apprise Configuration from the persistent store. This can be directly used with the Apprise CLI and/or the AppriseConfig() object (see here for details). This path does not work if APPRISE_CONFIG_LOCK is set.
/notify/{KEY}	POST	Sends notification(s) to all of the end points you've previously configured associated with a {KEY}. Payload Parameters 📌 body: Your message body. This is the only required field. 📌 title: Optionally define a title to go along with the body. 📌 type: Defines the message type you want to send as. The valid options are info, success, warning, and failure. If no type is specified then info is the default value used. 📌 tag: Optionally notify only those tagged accordingly. Use a comma (,) to OR your tags and a space ( ) to AND them. More details on this can be seen documented below. 📌 format: Optionally identify the text format of the data you're feeding Apprise. The valid options are text, markdown, html. The default value if nothing is specified is text.
/json/urls/{KEY}	GET	Returns a JSON response object that contains all of the URLS and Tags associated with the key specified.
/details	GET	Set the Accept Header to application/json and retrieve a JSON response object that contains all of the supported Apprise URLs. See here for more details

As an example, the /json/urls/{KEY} response might return something like this:

{
   "tags": ["devops", "admin", "me"],
   "urls": [
      {
         "url": "slack://TokenA/TokenB/TokenC",
         "tags": ["devops", "admin"]
      },
      {
         "url": "discord://WebhookID/WebhookToken",
         "tags": ["devops"]
      },
      {
         "url": "mailto://user:pass@gmail.com",
         "tags": ["me"]
      }
   ]
}

You can pass in attributes to the /json/urls/{KEY} such as privacy=1 which hides the passwords and secret tokens when returning the response. You can also set tag= and filter the returned results based on a comma separated set of tags. if no tag= is specified, then tag=all is used as the default.

Note, if APPRISE_CONFIG_LOCK is set, then privacy=1 is always enforced preventing credentials from being leaked.

Here is an example using curl as to how someone might send a notification to everyone associated with the tag abc123 (using /notify/{key}):

# Send notification(s) to a {key} defined as 'abc123'
curl -X POST -d "body=test message" \
    http://localhost:8000/notify/abc123

# Here is the same request but using JSON instead:
curl -X POST -d '{"body":"test message"}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    http://localhost:8000/notify/abc123

# Send attachments:
curl -X POST \
    -F 'urls=mailto://user:pass@gmail.com' \
    -F 'body=test message' \
    -F attach1=@Screenshot-1.png \
    -F attach2=@/my/path/to/Apprise.doc \
    http://localhost:8000/notify/abc123

🏷️ You can also leverage tagging which allows you to associate one or more tags with your Apprise URLs. By doing this, notifications only need to be referred to by their easy to remember notify tag name such as devops, admin, family, etc. You can very easily group more than one notification service under the same tag allowing you to notify a group of services at once. This is accomplished through configuration files (documented here) that can be saved to the persistent storage previously associated with a {KEY}.

# Send notification(s) to a {KEY} defined as 'abc123'
# but only notify the URLs associated with the 'devops' tag
curl -X POST -d 'tag=devops&body=test message' \
    http://localhost:8000/notify/abc123

# Here is the same request but using JSON instead:
curl -X POST -d '{"tag":"devops", "body":"test message"}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    http://localhost:8000/notify/abc123

Tagging

Leveraging tagging is one of the things that makes Apprise great. Not only can you group one or more notifications together (all sharing the same tag), but you can assign multiple tags to the same URL and trigger it through crafted and selected tag expressions.

Example	Effect
TagA	TagA
TagA, TagB	TagA OR TagB
TagA TagC, TagB	(TagA AND TagC) OR TagB
TagB TagC	TagB AND TagC

# 'AND' Example
# Send notification(s) to a {KEY} defined as 'abc123'
# Notify the URLs associated with the 'devops' and 'after-hours' tag
# The 'space' acts as an 'AND' You can also use '+' character (in spot of the
# space to achieve the same results)
curl -X POST -d '{"tag":"devops after-hours", "body":"repo outage"}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    http://localhost:8000/notify/abc123


# 'OR' Example
# Send notification(s) to a {KEY} defined as 'def456'
# Notify the URLs associated with the 'dev' OR 'qa' tag
# The 'comma' acts as an 'OR'.  The whitespace around the comma is ignored (if
# defined) You can also use '+' character (in spot of the space to achieve the
# same results)
curl -X POST -d '{"tag":"dev, qa", "body":"bug #000123 is back :("}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    http://localhost:8000/notify/def456


# 'AND' and 'OR' Example
# Send notification(s) to a {KEY} defined as 'projectX'
# Notify the URLs associated with the 'leaders AND teamA' AND additionally
# the 'leaders AND teamB'.
curl -X POST -d '{"tag":"leaders teamA, leaders teamB", "body":"meeting now"}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    http://localhost:8000/notify/projectX

API Response Codes

HTTP Code	Name	Effect
200	ok	Notification was sent
204	no content	There was no configuration (or it was empty) found by the specified {KEY}
400	bad request	Your API call did not conform to what was documented here
405	method not accepted	Your API call identified an action that has been disabled due to the Server configuration (such as a apprise:// APPRISE_RECURSION_MAX being exceeded).
424	failed dependency	At least one notification could not be sent. This can be due to - Not all notifications intended to be actioned could follow through (due to upstrem failures). You didn't idenify a tag associated with what was defined in your configuration. The tag(s) you specified do not match with those defined in your configuration.
500	internal server error	This can occur if there was an issue saving your configuration to disk (usually the cause of permission issues).

API Notes

• {KEY} must be 1-128 alphanumeric characters in length. In addition to this, the underscore (_) and dash (-) are also accepted.
  • Consider using keys like sha1, sha512, uuid, etc to secure shared namespaces if you wish to open your platform to others. Or keep it simple in a controlled environment and just use the default string apprise as your key (and as illustrated in the examples above). You can over-ride this default value by setting the APPRISE_DEFAULT_CONFIG_ID(see below).
• Specify the Content-Type of application/json to use the JSON support otherwise the default expected format is application/x-www-form-urlencoded (whether it is specified or not).
• There is no authentication (or SSL encryption) required to use this API; this is by design. The intention here is to be a light-weight and fast micro-service.
• There are no additional dependencies (such as database requirements, etc) should you choose to use the optional persistent store (mounted as /config).

Environment Variables

The use of environment variables allow you to provide over-rides to default settings.

Variable	Description
APPRISE_DEFAULT_THEME	Can be set to light or dark; it defaults to light if not otherwise provided. The theme can be toggled from within the website as well.
APPRISE_DEFAULT_CONFIG_ID	Defaults to apprise. This is the presumed configuration ID you always default to when accessing the configuration manager via the website.
APPRISE_CONFIG_DIR	Defines an (optional) persistent store location of all configuration files saved. By default: - Configuration is written to the apprise_api/var/config directory when just using the Django manage runserver script. However for the path for the container is /config.
APPRISE_ATTACH_DIR	The directory the uploaded attachments are placed in. By default: - Attachments are written to the apprise_api/var/attach directory when just using the Django manage runserver script. However for the path for the container is /attach.
APPRISE_ATTACH_SIZE	Over-ride the attachment size (defined in MB). By default it is set to 200 (Megabytes). You can set this up to a maximum value of 500 which is the restriction in place for NginX (internal hosting ervice) at this time. If you set this to zero (0) then attachments will not be passed along even if provided.
APPRISE_STATELESS_URLS	For a non-persistent solution, you can take advantage of this global variable. Use this to define a default set of Apprise URLs to notify when using API calls to /notify. If no {KEY} is defined when calling /notify then the URLs defined here are used instead. By default, nothing is defined for this variable.
APPRISE_STATEFUL_MODE	This can be set to the following possible modes: 📌 hash: This is also the default. It stores the server configuration in a hash formatted that can be easily indexed and compressed. 📌 simple: Configuration is written straight to disk using the {KEY}.cfg (if TEXT based) and {KEY}.yml (if YAML based). 📌 disabled: Straight up deny any read/write queries to the servers stateful store. Effectively turn off the Apprise Stateful feature completely.
APPRISE_CONFIG_LOCK	Locks down your API hosting so that you can no longer delete/update/access stateful information. Your configuration is still referenced when stateful calls are made to /notify. The idea of this switch is to allow someone to set their (Apprise) configuration up and then as an added security tactic, they may choose to lock their configuration down (in a read-only state). Those who use the Apprise CLI tool may still do it, however the --config (-c) switch will not successfully reference this access point anymore. You can however use the apprise:// plugin without any problem (see here for more details). This defaults to no and can however be set to yes by simply defining the global variable as such.
APPRISE_DENY_SERVICES	A comma separated set of entries identifying what plugins to deny access to. You only need to identify one schema entry associated with a plugin to in turn disable all of it. Hence, if you wanted to disable the glib plugin, you do not need to additionally include qt as well since it's included as part of the (dbus) package; consequently specifying qt would in turn disable the glib module as well (another way to accomplish the same task). To exclude/disable more the one upstream service, simply specify additional entries separated by a , (comma) or (space). The APPRISE_DENY_SERVICES entries are ignored if the APPRISE_ALLOW_SERVICES is identified. By default, this is initialized to windows, dbus, gnome, macosx, syslog (blocking local actions from being issued inside of the docker container)
APPRISE_ALLOW_SERVICES	A comma separated set of entries identifying what plugins to allow access to. You may only use alpha-numeric characters as is the restriction of Apprise Schemas (schema://) anyway. To exclusively include more the one upstream service, simply specify additional entries separated by a , (comma) or (space). The APPRISE_DENY_SERVICES entries are ignored if the APPRISE_ALLOW_SERVICES is identified.
SECRET_KEY	A Django variable acting as a salt for most things that require security. This API uses it for the hash sequences when writing the configuration files to disk (hash mode only).
ALLOWED_HOSTS	A list of strings representing the host/domain names that this API can serve. This is a security measure to prevent HTTP Host header attacks, which are possible even under many seemingly-safe web server configurations. By default this is set to * allowing any host. Use space to delimit more than one host.
APPRISE_PLUGIN_PATHS	Apprise supports the ability to define your own schema:// definitions and load them. To read more about how you can create your own customizations, check out this link here. You may define one or more paths (separated by comma ,) here. By default the apprise_api/var/plugin directory is scanned (which does not include anything). Feel free to set this to an empty string to disable any custom plugin loading.
APPRISE_RECURSION_MAX	This defines the number of times one Apprise API Server can (recursively) call another. This is to both support and mitigate abuse through the apprise:// schema for those who choose to use it. When leveraged properly, you can increase this (recursion max) value and successfully load balance the handling of many notification requests through many additional API Servers. By default this value is set to 1 (one).
APPRISE_WEBHOOK_URL	Define a Webhook that Apprise should POST results to upon each notification call made. This must be in the format of an http:// or https:// URI. By default no URL is specified and no webhook is actioned.
APPRISE_WORKER_COUNT	Over-ride the number of workers to run. by default this is (2 * CPUS) + 1 as advised by Gunicorn's website.
APPRISE_WORKER_TIMEOUT	Over-ride the worker timeout value; by default this is 300 (5 min) which should be more than enough time to send all pending notifications.
BASE_URL	Those who are hosting the API behind a proxy that requires a subpath to gain access to this API should specify this path here as well. By default this is not set at all.
LOG_LEVEL	Adjust the log level to the console. Possible values are CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, INFO, and DEBUG.
DEBUG	This defaults to no and can however be set to yes by simply defining the global variable as such.

Development Environment

The following should get you a working development environment to test with:

# Create a virtual environment in the same directory you
# cloned this repository to:
python -m venv .

# Activate it now:
. ./bin/activate

# install dependencies
pip install -r dev-requirements.txt -r requirements.txt

# Run a dev server (debug mode) accessible from your browser at:
# -> http://localhost:8000/
./manage.py runserver

Some other useful development notes:

# Check for any lint errors
flake8 apprise_api

# Run unit tests
pytest apprise_api

Apprise Integration

First you'll need to have it installed:

# install apprise into your environment
pip install apprise

Apprise CLI Pull Example

A scenario where you want to poll the API for your configuration:

# A simple example of the Apprise CLI
# pulling down previously stored configuration
apprise -vvv --body="test message" \
   --config=http://localhost:8000/get/{KEY}

You can also leverage the import parameter supported in Apprise configuration files if APPRISE_CONFIG_LOCK isn't set on the server you're accessing:

# Linux users can place this in ~/.apprise
# Windows users can place this info in %APPDATA%/Apprise/apprise

# Swap {KEY} with your apprise key you configured on your API
import http://localhost:8000/get/{KEY}

Now you'll just automatically source the configuration file without the need of the --config switch:

# Configuration is automatically loaded from our server.
apprise -vvv --body="my notification"

If you used tagging, then you can notify the specific service like so:

# Configuration is automatically loaded from our server.
apprise -vvv --tag=devops \
   --body="Tell James GitLab is down again."

If you're server has the APPRISE_CONFIG_LOCK set, you can still leverage the apprise:// plugin to trigger our pre-saved notifications:

# Swap {KEY} with your apprise key you configured on your API
apprise -vvv --body="There are donut's in the front hall if anyone wants any" \
   apprise://localhost:8000/{KEY}

Alternatively we can set this up in a configuration file and even tie our local tags to our upstream ones like so:

# Linux users can place this in ~/.apprise
# Windows users can place this info in %APPDATA%/Apprise/apprise

# Swap {KEY} with your apprise key you configured on your API
devteam=apprise://localhost:8000/{KEY}?tags=devteam

# the only catch is you need to map your tags on the local server to the tags
# you want to pass upstream to your Apprise server using this method.
# In the above we tied the local keyword `friends` to the apprise server using the tag `friends`

We could trigger our notification to our friends now like:

# Trigger our service:
apprise -vvv --tag=devteam \
    --body="Guys, don't forget about the audit tomorrow morning."

AppriseConfig() Pull Example

Using the Apprise Python library, you can easily access and load your saved configuration from this API in order to use for future notifications.

import apprise

# Point our configuration to this API server:
config = apprise.AppriseConfig()

# The following only works if APPRISE_CONFIG_LOCK is not set
# if APPRISE_CONFIG_LOCK is set, you can optionally leverage the apprise://
# URL instead.
config.add('http://localhost:8000/get/{KEY}')

# Create our Apprise Instance
a = apprise.Apprise()

# Store our new configuration
a.add(config)

# Send a test message
a.notify('test message')