Meraki Python Library for Dashboard API Simplify your Python development using our official Python library.

Meraki Dashboard API Python Library

The Meraki Dashboard API Python library provides all current Meraki Dashboard API calls to interface with the Cisco Meraki cloud-managed platform. The library is supported on Python 3.7 or above, and you can install it via PyPI:

pip install meraki

Features

While you can make direct HTTP requests to dashboard API in any programming language or REST API client, using a client library can make it easier for you to focus on your specific use case, without the overhead of having to write functions to handle the dashboard API calls. The Python library can also take care of error handling, logging, retries, and other convenient processes and options for you automatically.

  • Support for all API operations, as it uses the OpenAPI specification to generate source code
  • Log all API requests made to a local file as well as on-screen console
  • Automatic retries upon 429 rate limit errors, using the Retry-After field within response headers
  • Get all (or a specified number of) pages of data with built-in pagination control
  • Tweak settings such as maximum retries, certificate path, suppress logging, and other options
  • Simulate POST/PUT/DELETE calls to preview first, so that network configuration does not get changed
  • Includes the legacy module's (version 0.34 and prior) functions for backward compatibility

Setup

  1. Enable API access in your Meraki dashboard organization and obtain an API key (instructions)

  2. Keep your API key safe and secure, as it is similar to a password for your dashboard. If publishing your Python code to a wider audience, please research secure handling of API keys.

  3. Install the latest version of Python 3

  4. Use pip (or an alternative such as easy_install) to install the library from the Python Package Index:

    • pip install meraki
    • If you have both Python3 and Python2 installed, you may need to use pip3 (so pip3 install meraki) along with python3 on your system
    • If meraki was previously installed, you can upgrade to the latest non-beta release with pip install --upgrade meraki

  5. If you clone this repository and want to use v1 locally, rename the folder "meraki_v1" to "meraki", replacing the v0 contents there. You can also specify the version of the library when installing with pip:

    • See the full release history to pick the version you want, or use pip install meraki== without including a version number to display the list of available versions
    • v0 versions of the Python library begin with 0 (0.x.y), and v1 versions begin with 1 (1.0.0bz for beta)
    • Specify the version you want with the install command; for example: pip install meraki==0.x.y for v0 or pip install meraki==1.0.0bz for v1 beta
    • You can also see the version currently installed with pip show meraki

Usage

  1. Export your API key as an environment variable, for example:

    export MERAKI_DASHBOARD_API_KEY=093b24e85df15a3e66f1fc359f4c48493eaa1b73

  2. Alternatively, define your API key as a variable in your source code; this method is not recommended due to its inherent insecurity.

  3. Single line of code to import and use the library goes at the top of your script:

    import meraki

  4. Instantiate the client (API consumer class), optionally specifying any of the parameters available to set:

    dashboard = meraki.DashboardAPI()

  5. Make dashboard API calls in your source code, using the format client.scope.operation, where client is the name you defined in the previous step (dashboard above), scope is the corresponding scope that represents the first tag from the OpenAPI spec, and operation is the operation of the API operation. For example, to make a call to get the list of organizations accessible by the API key defined in step 1, use this function call:

    my_orgs = dashboard.organizations.getOrganizations()

  6. If you were using this module versions 0.34 and prior, that file's functions are included in the legacy.py file, and you can adapt your existing scripts by replacing their from meraki import meraki line to import meraki

For a full working script that demos this library, please see and run the org_wide_clients_v1.py file included (in examples folder). That code collects the clients of all networks, in all orgs to which the key has access. No changes are made, since only GET operations are called, and the data is written to local CSV output files.

Documentation

Every operation is documented with a Template example which can be run as a standalone python script.

Find the desired operation in the API docs, then select Template in the right console window. Finally, select Meraki Python Library to see the python script.

template screenshot Example operation https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/#!update-network