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Tip

If you are interested in BIG-IP deployment automation via iControl/REST APIs, be sure to visit Application Services 3 (AS3) and F5 Application Services Templates (FAST).
AS3 is our next-generation customer-facing declarative API designed to accelerate BIG-IP application services deployments as well as simplify integrations with 3rd party orchestration systems and CI/CD toolchains.
FAST is our next-generation configuration templating technology built on AS3.

Welcome to the iControl REST section!
iControl REST is an evolution on the proven, stable iControl framework. Rather than a SOAP approach, iControl REST uses REpresentational State Transfer (REST). This allows for light weight, rapid interaction between user or script and F5 device. With iControl REST you are able to leverage existing commands and product knowledge to quickly get yourself up and running with scripts that can lighten your workload via automation, help prevent potential issues by monitoring and preventing disaster before it strikes, silently tuning your deployment to fit your application’s needs without human intervention and more. Anything that you’re able to accomplish from the command line you can leverage programmatically via iControl REST.

Get Started with iControl REST

If you’re new to iControl REST here are a few articles and article series to check out.

Note: When using curl from the Windows(tm) 7 command line, such as Curl 7.29.0 from http://curl dot haxx dot se/download.html there is a difference in how you escape double quotes from the Unix command line. In Windows, you have to escape all double quotes found inside a pair of double quotes, because the shell doesn’t respect the single quote directive.
For example, the Unix curl command line given in the iControl rest 11.5.0 and 11.6.0 manuals should be:
curl -k -u admin:admin -H "Content-Type: \
application/json" -X POST -d \
'{"name":"tcb-pool","members":[ \
{"name":"192.168.25.32:80","description":"first member"} ] }' \
https://192.168.25.42/mgmt/tm/ltm/pool
On Windows(tm) 7, this becomes:
curl -k -u admin:admin -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d "{\"name\":\"tcb-pool\",\"members\":[ {\"name\":\"192.168.25.32:80\",\"description\":\"first member\"} ]}" https://192.168.25.42/mgmt/tm/ltm/pool

Reference Topics

If you’re looking to browse through some of the capabilities of iControl REST, here are some reference topics that will help get you on your way. The User Guide is of particular interest as it is jam packed with examples and deep dive information that should answer darn near any question you might have while getting started.

The BIG-IP API Reference documentation contains community-contributed content. F5 does not monitor or control community code contributions. We make no guarantees or warranties regarding the available code, and it may contain errors, defects, bugs, inaccuracies, or security vulnerabilities. Your access to and use of any code available in the BIG-IP API reference guides is solely at your own risk.