How do I know the keyName needed for tagging a SoftLayer resource?

Question

I want to tag a resource given its id and its type programmatically. It may be a SoftLayer_Virtual_Guest or any other taggable resource, doesn't matter. The SoftLayer_Tag/setTag api takes as parameters the tagname, the keyName, and the resource id. So, where do I find the keyName for tagging a given resource type? I know I can get all tag types using the SoftLayer_Tag/getAllTagTypes, but how do I relate the keyNames with the resource type I need to tag? Is this mapping documented somewhere? Is there some api I can leverage?

Answer 1

There is not way to retrieve the same keyName values from the devices, the only way is by using a conditional in your script or code, for example if you are using Softlayer_Account::getVirtualGuests to retrieve virtual servers then you should put GUEST in the request as following:

https://$user:$apiKey@api.softlayer.com/rest/v3/SoftLayer_Tag/setTags
Method: Post

{  
   "parameters":[  
      "tag1,tag2",
      "GUEST",
      29756959
   ]
}

Now, if you are using advancedSearch to retrieve the list of resources, then you can know the resourceType and on this case you could use the conditional IF, for example:

for item in items:
    resourceId = item['resource']['id']
    if item['resourceType'] == "SoftLayer_Hardware":
        keyName = "HARDWARE"
    if item['resourceType'] == "SoftLayer_Network_Vlan_Firewall":
        keyName = "NETWORK_VLAN_FIREWALL"
    .....
    .....

    result = client['Tag'].setTag("tag1,tag2", keyName, resourceId)

I think the following table could help you at the moment to set the correct keyName.

+----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Object or Device    |    Resource or Datatype                              | SoftLayer_Tag::getAllTagTypes   |
|                      |                                                      |           (keyName)             |
+----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| Bare Metal Server    | SoftLayer_Hardware_Server                            |           HARDWARE              |
| Gateway Member       | SoftLayer_Hardware (networkGatewayMemberFlag = true) |           HARDWARE              |
| Virtual Server       | SoftLayer_Virtual_Guest                              |            GUEST                |
| Ticket               | SoftLayer_Ticket                                     |            TICKET               |
| FireWall (Dedicated) | SoftLayer_Network_Vlan_Firewall                      |     NETWORK_VLAN_FIREWALL       |
| Images               | SoftLayer_Virtual_Guest_Block_Device_Template_Group  |         IMAGE_TEMPLATE          |
| NetScalers           | SoftLayer_Network_Application_Delivery_Controller    | APPLICATION_DELIVERY_CONTROLLER |
| Vlans                | SoftLayer_Network_Vlan                               |          NETWORK_VLAN           |
| Dedicated Hosts      | SoftLayer_Virtual_DedicatedHost                      |         DEDICATED_HOST          |
+----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------+

Some links:

Softlayer REST API for tagging machines

How to tag a block storage using softlayer api