Use nagios to send xml request to web service, and retrieve response

Question

I'm sending a request manually over Soap UI currently, the request is as follows.

   <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"xmlns:sear="http://www.mysite.com/ws/search/searchcustomer">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <sear:searchCustomerRequest>
         <sear:sustomerID>0000245</sear:sustomerID>
         <sear:registrationStatus>R</sear:registrationStatus>
         <sear:versionNumber>1.0</sear:versionNumber>
      </sear:searchCustomerRequest>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Now, I was hoping it would be possible to sent this using the check_http class/function in nagios,

Do you know if this is possible?

I would hope it would give me the following:

<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
   <env:Header/>
   <env:Body>
      <ns2:searchGprnResponse xmlns:ns2="http://www.mysite.com/ws/gasmapservice/searchcustomer">
         <ns2:areaName>Blackrock, County Dublin</ns2:areaName>
         <ns2:townName>Dublin City</ns2:townName>
         <ns2:countyName>Dublin</ns2:countyName>
      </ns2:searchcustomer>
   </env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

I would then like to grep for, lets say "Dublin", and if the count is > 0 then it would give an OK, if it doesn't return this, then it would give a failure.

I'm new to nagios, and am finding it a bit complicated to get this working,

Any Ideas would be greatly appreciated, I was thinking CURL might work, not sure though :)

Thanks again, Ben

Answer 1

It's a bit late to see your question, but hope this helps anyway.

You can do this with the check_http plugin. The check_http Nagios plugin is shipped with the Nagios Plugins package (nagios-plugins.org)

With the -P parameter you can POST the SOAP request and with the -r parameter you can (regex) match the response for a specific string.

From the commandline using the check_http plugin: (I had to truncate you SOAP request because I coudn't post url's with http headings...)

check_http -H my.webserver.org -p 8080 -u "/testing" -P '<soapenv:Envelope .... </soapenv:Envelope>' -r 'Dublin'

If this works for you, then you need to create a new check command and service check definition in Nagios.

Example check command definition for the webservice command (using also warning and critical repsonse time values)...

define command {
    command_name    check_webservice
    command_line    $USER1$/check_http -H $ARG1$ -p $ARG2$ -u $ARG3$ -P $ARG4$ -r $ARG5$ -w $ARG6$ -c $ARG7$
}

...and an example service check definition

define service {
    use                  generic-service
    host_name            my.webserver.org
    service_description  check_webservice
    check_command        check_http_webservice!my.webserver.org!8080!/testing!'<soapenv:Envelope .... </soapenv:Envelope>'!'Dublin'!5!10
}

Please note the quoting: This is essential is these kind of checks! In the examples above I use single quotes to quote the SOAP POST request and the response.