Tickets¶

The API supports ticket creation via the HTTP API (as well as via email, etc.). Currently, the API support creation of tickets only – so no modifications and deletions of existing tickets is possible via the API for now.

Create a Ticket¶

Tickets can be created in the osTicket system by sending an HTTP POST to api/tickets.xml, api/tickets.email or api/tickets.json depending on the format of the request content.

Fields

email: required Email address of the submitter
name: required Name of the submitter
subject: required Subject of the ticket
message: required Initial message for the ticket thread. The message content can be specified using RFC 2397 in the JSON format. The content of the message element should be the message body. Encoding is assumed based on the encoding attributed set in the xml processing instruction.

type: Content-Type of the message body. Valid values are text/html and text/plain. If not specified, text/plain is assumed

alert: If unset, disable alerts to staff. Default is true
autorespond: If unset, disable autoresponses. Default is true
ip: IP address of the submitter
priority: Priority id for the new ticket to assume
source: Source of the ticket, default is API
topicId: Help topic id associated with the ticket
attachments: An array of files to attach to the initial message. Each attachment must have some content and also the following fields (please refer to the format-specific examples below):

name: required name of the file to be attached. Multiple files with the same name are allowable

data: required contents of the file to be attached.

type: Mime type of the file. Default is text/plain

encoding: Set to base64 if content is base64 encoded

Custom Forms and Fields

Fields added to both the common ticket and common client forms can accept data via the API as well. The name attribute given in form designer is used to match up the data in the API request with the field to parse and receive the data.

These fields are included with the stock common client form. The name field can be changed and the field can also be deleted. This section is provided as an initial list. The fields supported by your help desk will depend on your configuration for the common client and common ticket forms.

phone: Phone number of the submitter. If the extension is included, use a capital ‘X’ followed by the extension
notes: Internal notes for the client created. These notes are only visible to authenticated staff members

Field Data Processing Rules

Some fields have special formatting for inputs. For instance date fields must receive the date formatted in Unix epoch time. This processing is performed automatically for requests from the web interface. However, in the case of the API, the remote requester is required to perform the procecssing priori to submitting the request via the API. The sections below outline how to format data for custom fields for requests sent via the API.

Date Fields: Date fields need to be formatted in a format recognizable to PHP’s strtotime() function. The best formats are Unix epoch time, and [ISO 8601] (http://xkcd.com/1179/). If using timezone offset in the date specification, ensure that the Timezone Aware flag is set for the field.
Phone number Fields: If the extension is provided with the phone number, include a capital ‘X’ between the phone number and phone extension parts of the field.
Choice and Selection Fields: Use either the key specified with the choice field, or the name of the field. For selection fields, do not use anything from the extra column of the list designer.

XML Payload Example

POST /api/tickets.xml

The XML data format is extremely lax. Content can be either sent as an attribute or a named element if it has no sub-content.

In the example below, the simple element could also be replaced as attributes on the root <ticket> element; however, if a CDATA element is necessary to hold special content, or difficult content such as double quotes is to be embedded, simple sub-elements are also supported.

Notice that the phone extension can be sent as the @ext attribute of the phone sub-element.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ticket alert="true" autorespond="true" source="API">
    <name>Angry User</name>
    <email>api@supportsystem.com</email>
    <subject>Testing API</subject>
    <phone>318-555-8634X123</phone>
    <message type="text/plain"><![CDATA[Message content here]]></message>
    <attachments>
        <file name="file.txt" type="text/plain"><![CDATA[
            File content is here and is automatically trimmed
        ]]></file>
        <file name="image.gif" type="image/gif" encoding="base64">
            R0lGODdhMAAwAPAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAMAAwAAAC8IyPqcvt3wCcDkiLc7C0qwy
            GHhSWpjQu5yqmCYsapyuvUUlvONmOZtfzgFzByTB10QgxOR0TqBQejhRNzOfkVJ
            +5YiUqrXF5Y5lKh/DeuNcP5yLWGsEbtLiOSpa/TPg7JpJHxyendzWTBfX0cxOnK
            PjgBzi4diinWGdkF8kjdfnycQZXZeYGejmJlZeGl9i2icVqaNVailT6F5iJ90m6
            mvuTS4OK05M0vDk0Q4XUtwvKOzrcd3iq9uisF81M1OIcR7lEewwcLp7tuNNkM3u
            Nna3F2JQFo97Vriy/Xl4/f1cf5VWzXyym7PHhhx4dbgYKAAA7
        </file>
    </attachments>
    <ip>123.211.233.122</ip>
</ticket>

JSON Payload Example

POST /api/tickets.json

Attachment data for the JSON content uses the RFC 2397 data URL format. As described above, the content-type and base64 encoding hints are optional. Furthermore, a character set can be optionally declared for each attachment and will be automatically converted to UTF-8 for database storage.

Notice that the phone number extension can be embedded in the phone value denoted with a capital X

Do also note that the JSON format forbids a comma after the last element in an object or array definition, and newlines are not allowed inside strings.

{
    "alert": true,
    "autorespond": true,
    "source": "API",
    "name": "Angry User",
    "email": "api@supportsystem.com",
    "phone": "3185558634X123",
    "subject": "Testing API",
    "ip": "123.211.233.122",
    "message": "data:text/html,MESSAGE <b>HERE</b>",
    "attachments": [
        {"file.txt": "data:text/plain;charset=utf-8,content"},
        {"image.png": "data:image/png;base64,R0lGODdhMAA..."},
    ]
}

Email Payload Example

POST /api/tickets.email

osTicket supports both remote (over http) and local piping. Please refer to the wiki on step-by-step instruction of setting up email piping.

MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.194.9.167 with HTTP; Thu, 7 Feb 2013 09:01:04 -0800 (PST)
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2013 11:01:04 -0600
Delivered-To: support@supportsystem.com
Message-ID: <CAL4KyrgKmpYxdX+6u3HyHZ3qN5K0mU2_sdfoVu6rT8cUNn+52w@supportsystem.com>
Subject: Testing
From: Peter Rotich <peter@supportsystem.com>
To: support@supportsystem.com
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=047d7bfcfaf263782204d52563a5

--047d7bfcfaf263782204d52563a5
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=047d7bfcfaf263781204d52563a3

--047d7bfcfaf263781204d52563a3
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Testing testing.

--
Peter Rotich
http://www.supportsystem.com

--047d7bfcfaf263781204d52563a3
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<div dir=3D"ltr">Testing testing.<br clear=3D"all"><div><br></div>-- <br>Pe=
ter Rotich<br>
<a href=3D"http://www.supportsystem.com" target=3D"_blank">http://www.osticket.=
com</a>
 </div>

--047d7bfcfaf263781204d52563a3--
--047d7bfcfaf263782204d52563a5
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; name="file.txt"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="file.txt"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
X-Attachment-Id: f_hcw5kqf60

Sm9lIGRhZGR5cyBjb250ZW50Cg==
--047d7bfcfaf263782204d52563a5--

Local piping can utilize api/pipe.php without the need to setup an API key.

Response

If successful, the server will send HTTP/201 Created. Otherwise, it will send an appropriate HTTP status with the content being the error description. Most likely offenders are

Required field not included
Data type mismatch (text send for numeric field)
Incorrectly encoded base64 data
Unsupported field sent
Incorrectly formatted content (bad JSON or XML)
Upon success, the content of the response will be the external ticket id of the newly-created ticket.

Status: 201 Created
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