2023 demo C Connecting

Hands On, Real-time Jamf APIs Using ruby-jss

IRB and Connecting to the JSS

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Jumping into IRB

• open terminal window
• Run irb

% irb
irb(main):001:0>

A little about irb

• 'irb' stands for 'interactive ruby', a real-time ruby interpreter

  • You can type ruby code into it - just like you type bash code into a shell

• Enter a line of ruby code, it runs and displays the 'return value' after a =>

• For clarity & easier copy-pasting, in this document:

  • The irb examples will use no prompt
  • Example output will start with a #, so irb will ignore it if you play with this on your own and paste it in

Require ruby-jss

• In irb, tell ruby that you want to use ruby-jss:

require 'ruby-jss'
# => true

• Don't worry if you ever require returns false, it just means the thing has already been required

• Ruby is now aware of a module called Jamf which contains all of the ruby-jss code

  • Note that JSS is a synonym for the Jamf module, you can use them interchangably. A lot of older code uses JSS.

• While we're requiring, lets do this:

require 'pp'
# => true

• 'Pretty Print' allows us to examine ruby objects in irb in a more readable format.

• In this demo, lots of ruby commands I'll paste into irb will end with ;0

  • This makes the irb responses even easier to read - the return value of the line of code is just 0
  • When writing scripts there's no need to do it

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Connecting to the API

Jamf.connect 'https://[email protected]/'

# Enter the password for JSS user [email protected]:
# => "[email protected], name: default"

• By default, you are prompted for the password, but it can be passed in to the 'connect' method also.

• Here's what we did:

  • The Jamf module has a method (function) connect that activates the default APIConnection object
  • That method takes the parameters needed to connect to the server.
    • You can provide a URL or the indiviual parameters like host:, user:, pw:, port: and more.
  • By default, you are prompted for the password, but it can be passed in to the 'connect' method also.
    • when passing in passwords, beware of security issues
  • If the password is correct, the connection is made, and the connect method returns the server name and the connection name. In this case we are using ruby-jss's 'default' connection, most of the time this is sufficient.

Connection objects in ruby-jss automatically deal with getting a bearer token and using it as required, they will also automatically renew that token under the hood (by default, tokens only last 30 minutes).

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