Anchore V2 API
V2 API Overview
Anchore Enterprise is an API-first system. All functions available in the UI and AnchoreCTL are constructed from the same
APIs directly available to users. THe APIs are a combination of a OpenAPI-specified REST-like API and a reporting-specific GraphQL API.
The REST API is the primary API for interacting with Anchore and has the most functionality. The GraphQL API is for querying
aggregated information within an account and does not provide the same functionality as the REST API.
The API specifications for this release of Anchore Enterprise are available here in the documentation. The specifications
are also available directly from your Enterprise deployment at GET /v2/openapi.json
REST API Version 2
The Anchore V2 API is now available with the Enterprise v4.9.0 release. V2 will be the only supported API beginning
in the future Enterprise v5.0.0 release.
GraphQL API
The GraphQL API is intended for reporting functions and aggregating data from all resources in an Anchore account. The data
that the GraphQL API operates on is updated differently than the data in the REST API and thus may have an update lag between
when changes are visible via the REST API and when that data flows into functionality covered by the GraphQL API.
Authentication
Any API exposed on a network should be protected at the channels level using TLS. Regardless of the authentication scheme,
transport security ensure resistance to replay attacks and other forms of request and credential abuse and should always be used.
See Configuring TLS for setting up TLS in Anchore service directly, or use TLS
termination via load balancers or service meshes such as Istio and LinkerD. The
right choice for your deployment will depend on your specific environment and requirements.
The API supports two authentication methods:
- HTTP Basic
- Use HTTP ‘Authorization’ header:
Authorization: Basic <base64_encode(<username> + ':' + <password>)>
- curl example:
curl -u <username>:<password> http://localhost:8228/v2/images
- OAuth2 Bearer Tokens
- SAML Bearer Flow
- PasswordGrant flow
Authorization
Anchore implements authorization with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
Enterprise Service V2 API Specifications
Browse Online
The V2 API is available to browse hosted in this site: V2 API browser
Downloadable YAML Documents
Anchore API Swagger Specification YAML
Feed Service API Swagger Specfication YAML
Retrieving the Swagger JSON from your Anchore Deployment Directly
The APIs provide their own specifications available from the deployment itself using: GET /v2/openapi.json
.
This provides a useful mechanism for integrations and other automation tasks to retrieve the specification for the correct
Anchore version since it is provided by the deployment itself.
1 - Anchore API V2 Reference
Reference for the Anchore API V2
2 - Anchore Enterprise Reports API Access
Anchore Enterprise Reports provides a GraphQL API for direct interaction with the service.
GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries.
The main Anchore REST API includes operations for retrieving scheduled report results as static sets to make retrieval
of saved results simpler. It is available here.
Get started
There are different ways of interacting with the Anchore Enterprise Reports GraphQL API. The following sections highlight
two different options for exploring the Anchore Enterprise Reports GraphQL schema with a few examples.
THe endpoint you use for interacting with the GraphQL API is the same host and port as the main V2 API. The path is:
/v2/reports/
.
Interactive GUI
One of the ways of exploring and testing a GraphQL schema is by using GraphiQL.
Anchore Enterprise Reports Service has GraphiQL built-in to the service and enabled by default.
To access it in a running Anchore Enterprise deployment, open one of the following urls in a browser:
- http://<main_api_servername:port>/v2/reports/graphql
- http://<main_api_servername:port>/v2/reports/global/graphql (Administrator Access Only)
You will be prompted to enter your Anchore Enterprise credentials.
Click the Docs tab to view the self-describing schema
In addition to being able to see the API docs, GraphiQL is handy for exploring and constructing queries supported by
the backing API. Here is an example of a query for available metrics in the system. Happy querying!
Command line using curl
You can also use curl to send HTTP requests to Anchore Enterprise Reports API. To view the schema
$ curl -u <username:password> -X POST "http://<servername:port>/v2/reports/graphql?query=%7B__schema%7BqueryType%7Bname%20description%20fields%7Bname%20description%20args%7Bname%20description%20type%7Bname%20kind%7D%7D%7D%7D%7D%7D%0A"
Depending on the size of data set (i.e. number of tags, images etc in the system) results of a query could be very
large. Reports service implements pagination for all queries to better handle the volume of the results and respond to
the clients within a reasonable amount of time.
Structure of the query contains a metadata object called pageInfo
. It is optional, recommended to add to all
queries:
{
imagesByVulnerability {
pageInfo {
nextToken
count
}
results {
...
}
}
}
The response may return an opaque token or a null
value for nextToken
:
{
"data": {
"imagesByVulnerability": {
"pageInfo": {
"nextToken": "Q1ZFLTIwMTYtMTAyNjY=",
"count": 1000
},
"results": [
...
]
}
}
}
A non-null nextToken
indicates that results are paginated. To get the next page of results, fire the same query along
with the nextToken
from the last response as a query parameter:
{
imagesByVulnerability(nextToken: "Q1ZFLTIwMTYtMTAyNjY=") {
pageInfo {
nextToken
count
}
results {
...
}
}
}
Some useful queries
Vulnerability centric queries
List vulnerabilities of a specific severity. And include all the images, currently or historically mapped to a tag,
affected by each vulnerability
Use the query’s filter
argument for specifying the conditionality. Reports service defaults to the “current”
image-tag mapping for computing results. To compute results across all image-tag mappings - current and historic,
set the tag
filter’s currentOnly
attribute to false
. Query for vulnerabilities of Critical severity:
{ imagesByVulnerability(filter: {vulnerability: {severity: Critical}, tag: {currentOnly: false}}) { pageInfo { nextToken } results { vulnerabilityId links imagesCount images { digest } } } }
To get more details such as tag mappings for the image, add the relevant attributes from the schema to the body of the query.
List vulnerabilities detected in the last x hours. And include all the images, currently or historically mapped to a tag, affected by each vulnerability
Use vulnerability
filter’s after
and before
attributes for specifying a time window using UTC timestamps. Query for vulnerabilities detected after/since August 1st 2019:
{
imagesByVulnerability(filter: {vulnerability: {after: "2019-08-01T00:00:00"}, tag: {currentOnly: false}}) {
pageInfo {
nextToken
}
results {
vulnerabilityId
images {
digest
}
}
}
}
Given a vulnerability ID, list all the artifacts affected by that vulnerability. And include all the images, currently or historically mapped to a tag, containing the said artifact
Use vulnerability
filter’s id
attribute for specifying a vulnerability identifier. Query for vulnerability ID CVE-2019-15213:
{
artifactsByVulnerability(filter: {vulnerability: {id: "CVE-2019-15213"}, tag: {currentOnly: false}}) {
pageInfo {
nextToken
}
results {
vulnerabilityId
links
artifactsCount
artifacts {
artifactName
artifactVersion
artifactType
severity
images {
digest
}
}
}
}
}
Policy evaluation centric queries
Given a repository, get the policy evaluation results for all the tags currently mapped to an image using the active policy
Use registry
and repository
filters for narrowing the results down. Query for docker.io registry and library/node repository:
{
policyEvaluationsByTag(filter: {registry: {name: "docker.io"}, repository: {name: "library/node"}}) {
pageInfo {
nextToken
}
results {
repositories {
tagsCount
tags {
tagName
imageDigest
evaluations {
result
reason
}
}
}
}
}
}
Given a tag, get the policy evaluation history. Include policy evaluations encompassing updates to the tag and the active policy
Reports service defaults to the “current” state for computing results. To compute results across historic state, a few filter
knobs have to be turned
tag
-> currentOnly
set to false
instructs the service to include all, current and historic, image tag mappingspolicyEvaluation
-> latestOnly
set to false
instructs the service to include all, current and historic, policy evaluationspolicyBundle
-> active
set to false
instructs service to include all, current and historic, active policies
{
policyEvaluationsByTag(filter: {registry: {name: "docker.io"}, repository: {name: "library/node"}, tag: {name: "latest", currentOnly: false}, policyEvaluation: {latestOnly: false}, policyBundle: {active: false}}) {
pageInfo {
nextToken
}
results {
repositories {
tags {
imageDigest
detectedAt
current
evaluations {
result
reason
lastEvaluatedAt
policyBundle {
bundleId
bundleDigest
}
latest
}
}
}
}
}
}
Metric centric queries
List all the available metrics
{
metrics {
pageInfo {
nextToken
}
results {
id
name
description
metricType
}
}
}
Given a metric ID, list values for that metric within a period of time. Useful for plotting changes over a timescale
Query for vulnerabilities.tags.all.critical metric between 1st August and 1st September 2019:
{
metricData(filter: {metricId: "vulnerabilities.tags.all.critical", start: "2019-08-01T00:00:00", end: "2019-09-01T00:00:00"}) {
pageInfo {
nextToken
}
results {
collectedAt
value
}
}
}
3 - Migrating from API V1 to V2
Overview
The changes from V1 to V2, while breaking, primarily resolve inconsistencies and confusion in the V1 API rather than
establishing any new API patterns or interaction styles. Clients using the V1 API should be able to migrate to V2 without
changing their workflows at all.
API Consolidation
Endpoint Consolidation
In the V2 API, all REST-like APIs are available from the main API service in the deployment. This means simpler integrations,
ingress setups, and client configurations. Specifically, the RBAC Manager API, Notifications API, and Reports API are now served
through the same endpoint. Those services will become internal-only services for processing requests in the 5.0 release.
A single swagger/openapi specification now covers all Anchore APIs except the GraphQL API.
Enterprise & Non-Enterprise Route Consolidation
There are no longer any enterprise
prefixed routes, and all routes that had a version with and without the enterprise
prefix are now consolidated with no prefix but implement the full enterprise functionality.
Authentication
There are no changes to authentication mechanisms.
HTTP Basic and Oauth2 Tokens using JWT continue to be the authentication mechanisms for
using the API. See Authentication
Authorization
There are no changes to the RBAC authorization scheme, actions, and management workflows.
All roles, accounts, and role memberships directly transfer to V2, subject to some
field and URL path element renaming for consistency as indicated in the table below.
All the RBAC-related APIs are now served from the main API endpoint per the consolidation section above. There is no
longer a need to expose a public port from the RBAC manager service.
Specification
The V2 API is specified using OpenAPI v2/Swagger v2. We anticipate a future migration to specifying the API using
OpenAPI v3 to support more modern client generation tooling. However, in the 4.9 release of the V2 API the specification
continues to be in Swagger V2.
Required Version in Path
In the V1 API, Anchore services would automatically re-write a version-less request path to use a “v1” prefix. This behavior will
no longer be present in the V2 API and in the 5.0 release all clients must specify the requested API version in the path explicitly.
For example, in V1:
GET /images –> routed internally to –> GET /v1/images
In V2:
GET /images –> HTTP 404. Must use GET /v2/images explicitly.
This is being strictly enforced to allow better future migration between APIs and consistent request handling for clients as
the APIs evolve.
Field Renames and Consolidations Overview
This covers the most impactful and significant updates, but is not exhaustive.
Account Name
The “userId” field was a legacy element of a very old version of Anchore. It is now removed and replaced with account_name
in the operations where the return is in fact the account name rather than the ID of the specific user. Since resources
in Anchore are owned by accounts, which may contain multiple users, this is the correct and clear field.
Example: userId
==> account_name
Snake Casing
There is no longer a mix between Camel Casing and Snake Casing for fields in the API. All fields are snake-case for consistency.
Example: imageDigest
is now image_digest
Arrays Removed Where Not Appropriate
All APIs that returned an array where the actual response was always a single element have been re-typed to return objects.
Example:
POST /v2/images
, returns a single object instead of an array.
APIs that may return large arrays have been wrapped in an object and the array set to the “items” property of the object.
This change will allow better non-breaking evolution of the API in the future.
Detailed Changes from V1 to V2
API Comparison