Apprise API

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

• Send notifications to more than 80+ services.
• An incredibly lightweight gateway to Apprise.
• A production ready micro-service at your disposal.

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

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: 386, amd64, arm/v6, 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. Apprise supports over 80+ notification services today and is always expanding to add support for more! 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:

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:[email protected]&body=test message' \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# Send a notification with an attachment
curl -X POST \
    -F 'urls=mailto://user:[email protected]' \
    -F 'body=test message' \
    -F [email protected] \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# Send multiple attachments; just make sure the attach keyword is unique:
curl -X POST \
    -F 'urls=mailto://user:[email protected]' \
    -F 'body=test message' \
    -F [email protected] \
    -F attach2=@/my/path/to/Apprise.doc \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

curl -X POST -d 'urls=mailto://user:[email protected]&body=test message' \
    -F @/path/to/your/attachment \
    http://localhost:8000/notify

# Send your notifications directly using JSON
curl -X POST -d '{"urls": "mailto://user:[email protected]", "body":"test message"}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    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:

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:[email protected]",
         "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:[email protected]' \
    -F 'body=test message' \
    -F [email protected] \
    -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.

# '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 Notes

• {KEY} must be 1-64 alphanumeric characters in length. In addition to this, the underscore (_) and dash (-) are also accepted.
• 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.

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 off of 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')