Knowledge Base

Publishing Monitoring Results using a PHP Script (Alternative 1)

[Applies to PRTG Network Monitor V7.0.8 (or later) and IPCheck Server Monitor V5.0 (or later)]

This article explains how you can access the so-called "TEXTLIST" interface of IPCheck Server Monitoring 5 and PRTG Network Monitor 7 using PHP to publish the current monitoring results using an external webserver. This way you can e.g. apply your own look&feel or do your own user accounting.

In some situations the features for monitoring status publishing of IPCheck Server Monitor or PRTG Network Monitor may not be flexible enough. Using the TEXTLIST interface (which is also used by IPCheck's Windows GUI) you can access the current monitoring status via HTTP using an external script.

This sample shows a PHP script that requests the monitoring data for one user account from the IPCheck or PRTG server and publishes the data into a simple HTML file.

With this trick the monitoring status can be shown through another webserver without the need for the final user to have access to the IPCheck server itself (since the username/password is hidden in the PHP script).

Notes:

  • This interface was initially introduced for IPCheck Server Monitor 5. For easy upgrades we have also implemented it for PRTG Network Monitor 7, but it should be considered deprecated for PRTG. Please use the PRTG API for new projects.
  • There is also another script available in article 107
  • For detailed documentation about the file format please see article 97
  • Before you can use the script you must fill in your servername, username and password

This screenshot shows the output of both scripts (left: original, right: alternate). Click the image to zoom in.

sample Screen

Original IPCheck Monitoring Status PHP script by Dirk Paessler

<?

// Sample Script to publish monitoring results of IPCheck Server Monitor using a PHP script 
// © 2005-2008 Paessler AG, www.paessler.com 
// V 1.2, Aug 2008 
// V 1.1, April 2006 
// V 1.0 Initial Release (dp) 
// V 1.1 Added optional use of the CURL module to get the data (dp) 

$protocol="http"; // use "http" or "https" according to your setup 
$servername="YOURSERVERNAME"; // enter DNS name or IP address, add ":portnumber" if you do not use port 80 
$username="USERACCOUNT@YOURSERVER.COM"; // account username (email address), URL encoded
$password="YOURPASSWORD"; // account password, URL encoded
?> 

<html> 
<head> 


<title>IPCheck Server Monitor - Monitoring Results (<? echo 
date("F j, Y, 
G:i:s");?>)</title> 
 

<style> 
body,td,p,div { font-family:verdana,tahoma,arial,sans-serif; font-size:10px; } 
h2 {font-size: 13px; margin:4px;padding:0px;} 
h3 {font-size: 11px; margin:4px;padding:0px;} 
body {background-color:#fff; margin:0px;} 
td {padding-left:5px;padding-right:5px;border-bottom:1px solid #eeeeee;} 
</style> 
</head> 

<body> 

<? 

// Option 1: Using the file() function is the fastest way, but may not support HTTPS in all situations 

$lines=file($protocol."://".$servername."/textlist?login=".$username."&pass=".$password); 


// Option 2: Using the CURL library 
// See: http://www.php.net/curl 
// See: http://www.zend.com/manual/ref.curl.php 

/* UNCOMMENT THIS!!! 

 $url = $protocol."://".$servername."/textlist"; 
 $params = "login=".$username."&pass=".$password; 
 $user_agent = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)"; 
 $ch = curl_init(); 

 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST,1); 
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$params); 
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url); 
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, FALSE); // Necessary for IPCheck's default certificate 
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE); // Necessary for IPCheck's default certificate 
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $user_agent); 
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); 

 $lines=curl_exec ($ch); 
 $lines=explode(chr(13),str_replace(chr(10),"",$lines)); 

 if (curl_errno($ch)) { print curl_error($ch); } else { curl_close($ch);} 
 curl_close ($ch); 
*/ 

echo('<table cellspacing=0 >'); 

foreach ($lines as 
$line) 

{ 
 $parts=explode(",",substr($line,3,999)); 

 if (substr($line,0,2)=='Gr' ) //A Group 
 { 
 echo "<tr bgcolor=#dddddd><td colspan=6><h2>Group: ".$parts[0]."</h2></td></tr>"; 
 }; 


 if (substr($line,0,2)=='Sr' ) //A Server 
 { 
 echo "<tr bgcolor=#eeeeee><td>&nbsp;</td><td colspan=5><h3>Server: ".$parts[0]."</h3></td></tr>"; 
 } 

 if (substr($line,0,2)=='Sn' ) // A Sensor 
 { 
 $Col="white"; 

 if ($parts[3]=='Up') $Col="lightgreen"; 

 if ($parts[3]=='Down') $Col="pink"; 

 if ($parts[3]=='Paused') $Col="lightblue"; 

 if ($parts[3]=='Warning') $Col="yellow"; 

 echo "<tr bgcolor=#eeeeee ><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td bgcolor='".$Col."'>Sensor: ".$parts[0]."</td><td bgcolor='".$Col."'>".$parts[2]."</td><td bgcolor='".$Col."'>".$parts[3]."</td><td bgcolor='".$Col."'>".$parts[4]."</td></tr>"; 
 } 

 if (substr($line,0,2)=='Me' ) //A Message, we leave the loop here 
 { 
 break; 

 } 
} 
echo('</table><br><br>'); 



echo('<table cellspacing=0 >'); 
echo "<tr bgcolor=#dddddd><td colspan=2><h2>Recent Messages</h2></td></tr>"; 


$msgs=""; 
foreach ($lines 
as $line) 
{ 

 $parts=explode(",",substr($line,3,999)); 
 if (substr($line,0,2)=='Me' ) //A Message 
 { 
 $Col="white"; 
 if (strpos($parts[3],'DOWN -')>0) $Col="pink"; 
 if (strpos($parts[3],'UP -')>0) $Col="lightgreen"; 
 if (strpos($parts[3],'WARNING -')>0) $Col="yellow"; 
 if ($parts[2]=0) $Col="white"; 
 $msgs="<tr bgcolor=".$Col."><td nowrap>".date("F j, Y, G:i:s",($parts[0]+$parts[1]/10000000-35065)*24*60*60+mktime(0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1996)."</td>")."<td>".$parts[3]."</td></tr>".$msgs; 
 } 
} 

echo($msgs.'</table>'); 

?> 
Last Refresh: <? echo date("F j, Y, G:i:s"); 


<? //OPTIONAL: This code dumps the data into the browser 

// echo("<hr><pre>"); 
// foreach 
($lines as $line) {echo $line;}; 
// echo("</pre>"); 

?> 

<p 
style="font-size:8px">© 2005-2008 <a href="http://www.paessler.com">Paessler AG</a></p> 
</body> 
</html>

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