REST API Automation - Meraki, DNA Center, Palo Alto

The Scenario

Your Palo Alto firewall has 200 rules and you need to export them all to a spreadsheet for an audit. The web UI can only show 50 at a time. The PAN-OS XML API can pull all of them in one call — but you have never used it. AI generates the API call for you.

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The Prompt

Write a Python script that:
1. Connects to a Palo Alto firewall at 10.1.1.254 using the REST/XML API
2. Authenticates with an API key (stored in environment variable PAN_API_KEY)
3. Pulls ALL security policy rules from the running config
4. Parses each rule: name, source zone, dest zone, source IP, dest IP, application, action, logging
5. Exports to a CSV file "firewall_rules_[date].csv"
6. Prints a summary: total rules, deny rules count, any rules with "any" in both source and destination

Use the requests library. Handle SSL certificate warnings for self-signed certs.

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What AI Gives You

A complete API client that authenticates, queries the security rulebase, parses the XML response, and exports structured data.

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The Pattern Works for Any API

Replace the prompt for your platform:

• Meraki: "Pull all networks and their device inventory from the Meraki Dashboard API"
• DNA Center: "Get all devices and their health scores from Cisco DNA Center API"
• Cisco ISE: "Export all active RADIUS sessions from ISE MnT API"
• Zabbix: "Pull all hosts with unacknowledged triggers via Zabbix API"

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Try It Yourself

Pick one API in your environment. Ask AI to generate a script that pulls useful data and exports it. Run it, verify the output.