Tag: nodejs

Aeries API – Creating an Extract File using Node

Aeries, Computers, Programming

This will be a quick example of how to create a simple export of student data from the Aeries SIS system using Node.js. To make things simple, we have created an NPM package that wraps the API into a helper to make calls for data easy. You can read more about that here, https://www.npmjs.com/package/aeriesjs.

The full Aeries API documentation can be found, here.

We are going to assume you have the basic understanding of how Node.js and NPM works, but if not, you can get started here, https://nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/.

To start out we’re going to take a simple Node application and add the aeriesjs and csv-write-stream package references to the package.json dependencies section.

{
    "name": "aeries-export",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "Aeries SIS Export Example",
    "main": "app.js",
    "author": {
        "name": "Josh Santomieri",
        "url": "https://www.santsys.com/"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "aeriesjs": "^1.1.1",
        "csv-write-stream": "^2.0.0"
    }
}

Once we have that added, we can start building our code… In this example we’re going to create a students.csv file that will export a caret (^) delimited list of students. The student information we will be pulling will be Student ID, First Name, Last Name and Home Phone Number.

In this demo we’re going to use the Aeries API demo URL and certificate. In practice you should use your districts API Url and Certificate.

In our application code, lets name this file app.js, add the following:

'use strict';

let api = require('aeriesjs');
let csv = require('csv-write-stream');
let fs = require('fs');

var aeries = new api({
    certificate: '477abe9e7d27439681d62f4e0de1f5e1',
    url: 'https://demo.aeries.net/aeries/',
    verifyCerts: true
});

// Get all of the students at school 990
aeries.getStudents(990, function (err, students, code) {
    if (err) {
        console.log(err);
    }
    else {
        if (students && students.length > 0) {

            // Setup the file stream
            var writer = csv({
                separator: '^',
                newline: '\r\n',
                sendHeaders: true
            });
            writer.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('students.csv'));

            var count = 0;

            // loop through the students
            for (var i in students) {
                var s = students[i];
                if (s) {
                    // create a new object with the information we want
                    var studentOut = {
                        PermanentID: s.PermanentID,
                        FirstName: s.FirstName,
                        LastName: s.LastName,
                        HomePhone: s.HomePhone
                    };
										
                    // write the student to the file
                    writer.write(studentOut);
                    count++;
                }
            }

            // close the file stream
            writer.end();

            console.log('Wrote ' + count + ' students to file "students.csv".');
        }
        else {
            console.log('No students found.');
        }
    }
});

That’s it!

If you run that code using node app.js you will end up with a file named students.csv that contains the information we outlined above.

"PermanentID"^"FirstName"^"LastName"^"HomePhone"
"99000001"^"Robert"^"Aadasian"^"7775550214"
"99000002"^"Ruben"^"Aadasian"^"7775550214"
"99000003"^"Jonathan"^"Aguilar"^"7775557860"
"99000004"^"Tonya"^"Acres"^"7775555363"
"99000005"^"Stephanie"^"Aguilar"^"7775557860"
...

If you need to FTP this data anywhere, I always recommend using something like WinSCP to script out the FTP process. You can get more information on WinSCP here, https://winscp.net/.

Download this sample code here, aeriesjs-test.

To run, Install Node 8 or greater, extract the zip to a directory, then run npm update then node app.js.

C:\> cd aeriesjs-test

C:\aeriesjs-test> npm update
npm notice created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file.
npm WARN aeriesjs-test@1.0.0 No repository field.

+ csv-write-stream@2.0.0
+ aeriesjs@1.1.1
added 69 packages from 70 contributors in 6.795s

C:\aeriesjs-test> node app.js
Wrote 740 students to file "students.csv".

Node RADIUS Server Example

Programming

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of small projects that involve RADIUS authentication on devices and have had to build multiple RADIUS auth servers for testing communication and integrating with 3rd party systems.

A very cool thing about being able to spin up a simple RADIUS server is you can create a basic server then hook it to your favorite authentication service and/or threat detection service. So, for example, let’s say you want to authenticate a user against a local repository or LDAP directory, then verify that the user is valid in your enterprise threat detection system, you can do that by simply adding in another validation step.

It also gives you the option to point servers at your custom application and send login requests to it and verify what your clients are sending, etc. This is great for debugging hardware that may not have the best internal logging. The options are really endless.

Read more