Deploying OpenStack

API Support

The Glance API is a simple REST API for querying image metadata or storing or retrieving actual images. Data is returned as a JSON-encoded mapping (query) or binary (image retrieval). Below is an example of querying Glance using curl for details on all images:

$ curl http://localhost:9292/images
{"images":
    [{"name": "natty-uec",
      "container_format": "ami",
      "disk_format": "ami",
      "checksum": "b420e097baf54cd32af5970b3f0cb93b",
      "id": 6,
      "size": 1476395008}]
}

In this example, Glance shows that there is only one image in the registry.

Caution

The List Images and List Images Detail calls can return huge amounts of data for large image stores, as no record filtering exists in this version of Glance.

The Glance API calls are detailed in Table 3-4.

Table 3-4. Glance API Calls

Action	API Call	Description
Store Image	POST /images	Stores the image and then returns the metadata created about it
Download Image	GET /images/ ID	Retrieves image specified by ID
Update Image	PUT /images/ ID	Update image metadata or actual data specified by ID
Delete Image	DELETE /images/ ID	Delete image specified by ID
List Images	GET /images	Return id, name, disk_format, container_format, checksum, and size of all images
List Images Detail	GET /images/detail	Return list (with all metadata) of all images
Image Details	HEAD /images/ ID	Return all metadata for image specified by ID

The full API documentation can be viewed at the online documentation website.