REST API Filtering

Filtering Objects

The objects returned by an API list endpoint can be filtered by attaching one or more query parameters to the request URL. For example, GET /api/dcim/sites/?status=active will return only sites with a status of "active."

Multiple parameters can be joined to further narrow results. For example, GET /api/dcim/sites/?status=active&region=europe will return only active sites within the Europe region.

Generally, passing multiple values for a single parameter will result in a logical OR operation. For example, GET /api/dcim/sites/?region=north-america&region=south-america will return sites in North America or South America. However, a logical AND operation will be used in instances where a field may have multiple values, such as tags. For example, GET /api/dcim/sites/?tag=foo&tag=bar will return only sites which have both the "foo" and "bar" tags applied.

Filtering by Choice Field

Some models have fields which are limited to specific choices, such as the status field on the Prefix model. To find all available choices for this field, make an authenticated OPTIONS request to the model's list endpoint, and use jq to extract the relevant parameters:

$ curl -s -X OPTIONS \
-H "Authorization: Token $TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
http://netbox/api/ipam/prefixes/ | jq ".actions.POST.status.choices"
[
  {
    "value": "container",
    "display_name": "Container"
  },
  {
    "value": "active",
    "display_name": "Active"
  },
  {
    "value": "reserved",
    "display_name": "Reserved"
  },
  {
    "value": "deprecated",
    "display_name": "Deprecated"
  }
]

Note

The above works only if the API token used to authenticate the request has permission to make a POST request to this endpoint.

Filtering by Custom Field

To filter results by a custom field value, prepend cf_ to the custom field name. For example, the following query will return only sites where a custom field named foo is equal to 123:

GET /api/dcim/sites/?cf_foo=123

Custom fields can be mixed with built-in fields to further narrow results. When creating a custom string field, the type of filtering selected (loose versus exact) determines whether partial or full matching is used.

Lookup Expressions

Certain model fields also support filtering using additional lookup expressions. This allows for negation and other context-specific filtering.

These lookup expressions can be applied by adding a suffix to the desired field's name, e.g. mac_address__n. In this case, the filter expression is for negation and it is separated by two underscores. Below are the lookup expressions that are supported across different field types.

Numeric Fields

Numeric based fields (ASN, VLAN ID, etc) support these lookup expressions:

Filter	Description
`n`	Not equal to
`lt`	Less than
`lte`	Less than or equal to
`gt`	Greater than
`gte`	Greater than or equal to
`empty`	Is empty/null (boolean)

Here is an example of a numeric field lookup expression that will return all VLANs with a VLAN ID greater than 900:

GET /api/ipam/vlans/?vid__gt=900

String Fields

String based (char) fields (Name, Address, etc) support these lookup expressions:

Filter	Description
`n`	Not equal to
`ic`	Contains (case-insensitive)
`nic`	Does not contain (case-insensitive)
`isw`	Starts with (case-insensitive)
`nisw`	Does not start with (case-insensitive)
`iew`	Ends with (case-insensitive)
`niew`	Does not end with (case-insensitive)
`ie`	Exact match (case-insensitive)
`nie`	Inverse exact match (case-insensitive)
`empty`	Is empty/null (boolean)

Here is an example of a lookup expression on a string field that will return all devices with switch in the name:

GET /api/dcim/devices/?name__ic=switch

Foreign Keys & Other Fields

Certain other fields, namely foreign key relationships support just the negation expression: n. Here is an example of a lookup expression on a foreign key, it would return all the VLANs that don't have a VLAN Group ID of 3203:

GET /api/ipam/vlans/?group_id__n=3203

Ordering Objects

To order results by a particular field, include the ordering query parameter. For example, order the list of sites according to their facility values:

GET /api/dcim/sites/?ordering=facility

To invert the ordering, prepend a hyphen to the field name:

GET /api/dcim/sites/?ordering=-facility

Multiple fields can be specified by separating the field names with a comma. For example:

GET /api/dcim/sites/?ordering=facility,-name