Today I would like to go over how to get client information from your Unifi Controller. We will first connect to our Unifi Controller with Powershell using the Unifi API. Then from there we will pull each site and create a list of different sites. Finally, we will use the site information to pull the client information from the controller.
Powershell and API the Unifi Controller
The first step is to create a connection with our PowerShell. We will need a few items:
User Account that Has at least read access
The IP address of our controller
The API port.
An Unifi Controller that is configured correctly. (Most are now)
Ask your system administrator to create an account with read access. Check your configuration for the IP addresses and the Port numbers. By default, the API port is 8443. Now we have those pieces of information, its time to discuss what is needed.
Connecting to the API
To connect to the Unifi controller API, you need a Cookie. This is not like how we connected to the Graph API in our previous blog. To get this cookie, we will need to execute a post. The API URL is the IP address followed by the port number, API and login. Very standard.
$uri = "https://$($IPAddress):8443/api/login"
We will need to create a header that accepts jsons. To do this we simply say accept equal application/json.
$headers = @{'Accept' = 'application/json' }
Now we will create our Parameters for the body. Since this is going to be a Post command, we have to have a body. This is where we will place our Username and Password. We are going to build out a Hashtable and then convert that into a json since the API is expecting a json. We will use the convertto-json command to accomplish this step.
Now we have our Body built out, it’s time to create a session. We will use the invoke-restmethod command to do this. We feed the URI we made a few steps back. The body will be the body we just built out. The content type will be ‘application/json’. Our headers will be the header we made a few steps back. We will skip the certificate check unless we are using a cert. Most of the time we are not. Finally, the secret sauce. We want a session. Thus, we use the Session Variable and give it a session name. Let’s go with S for the session.
Now we have our Session cookie, its’ time to grab some information. We will use the same headers but this time we will use the Session Name, S. The URL for sites is /api/Self/Sites.
This URL will get the sites from your Unifi Controller. Once again we will use the Invoke-RestMethod to pull the data down. This time we are using a get method. The same Content type and headers will be used. Along with the skip certificate check. The Session Variable is going to be the Web Session and we will use the $S this time.
The Sites variable will contain two items. a meta and a data variable. Everything we will need is inside the Data variable. To access it we can use the $sites.data to see all the data.
Here is an example of what the data will look like for the sites.
_id : 5a604378614b1b0c6c3ef9a0
desc : A descriptoin
name : Ziipk5tAk
anonymous_id : 25aa6d32-a165-c1d5-73a0-ace01b433c14
role : admin
Get Client Information from your Unifi Controller
Now that we have the sites, we can go one at a time and pull all the clients from that site. We will do this using a Foreach loop. There is something I want to point out first. Remember, the data that is returned is two variables, two arrays. The first one is Meta. Meta is the metadata of the session itself. It’s something we don’t need. We do need the Data. For our foreach loop, we will pull directly from the data array. We want to push everything in this loop into a variable. This way we can parse out useful data, sometime to much data is pointless.
$Clients = Foreach ($Site in $Sites.Data) {
#Do something
}
Without using the $Sites.Data we will have to pull the data from the command itself. This can cause issues later if you want to do more complex things.
The URL we will be using is the /api/s/{site name}/stat/sta. We will be replacing the Site name with our $site.name variable and pushing all that into another Uri.
Then we will execute another invoke-restmethod. Same as before, we use the same headers, content type, and web session. The only difference is we wrap up the command inside preferences. This way we can pull the data directly while the command executes. Less code that way.
Each time the command runs, it will release the data that we need and that will all drop into the $Clients variable. From here, we pull the information we want. The information that the client’s produce includes, the match addresses, times, IP addresses, possible names, IDs and more. So, it’s up to you at this point to pick and choose what you want.
The Script
The final script is different because I wanted to add site names and data to each output. But here is how I built it out. I hope you enjoy it.
Welp is the end of the year. I have things in the works, however, I just started a new job. It requires me to learn many new and exciting things. While I learn these new things, I will be working on new blog posts for the upcoming year. Starting next year, I will be adding a monthly mental health blog post and tieing it into information technology. I will cover things like burnout, all-or-nothing thinking, avoiding becoming sour in IT, and much more. On the Information technology side of things, I will be adding items like a universal dashboard, Powershell with SQL, graph API, SharePoint items, and more. I will be diving deeper into items like unifi controllers, firewalls, and different networking stacks. Finally, I will be looking into more power automate and helping get people off the ground.
However, during this month, I need to take a break and focus on my family and the new job. Thank you all for supporting me this year with this transition.
Today I was trying to sync a user’s account to the cloud and I received an error code that was new to me. Access denied, Unauthorized! I was using a domain admin account. I should have full access and rights. It threw me off as I have never seen such a thing. Why was I getting the “Azure AD Connect Unauthorized error”? This is what the error message looked like:
Retrieving the COM class factory for remote component with CLSID {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx}
from machine DC-01 failed due to the following error: 80070005 DC-01.
+ CategoryInfo : WriteError: (Microsoft.Ident...ADSyncSyncCycle:StartADSyncSyncCycle)
[Start-ADSyncSyncCycle], UnauthorizedAccessException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Retrieving the COM class factory for remote component with CLSID
{835BEE60-8731-4159-8BFF-941301D76D05} from machine DC-01 failed due to the following error:
80070005 DC-01.,Microsoft.IdentityManagement.PowerShell.Cmdlet.StartADSyncSyncCycle
I was lost for a second. After looking into ad for the ADSync groups and found that no user had access to any of the groups. There were 4 groups found: the Password Set, Operators, Browse, and admins.
I added the domain admins to the ADSync Admins. Once I logged out of the server and logged back into the server. Then I was able to complete an ADSync Cycle. This resolved the Azure AD Connect Unauthorized error message for me. Why were domain admins not present? I don’t know, but now I know where to look if I see this error again.
Regex… Even the PowerShell Masters struggle with it from time to time. I helped a friend of mine with some URL chaos. The URL he had was a software download and the token was inside the URL. Yeah, it was weird but totally worth it. There were many different ways to handle this one. But the Matches was the best way to go. What was interesting about this interaction was I could later in another script. Unlike my other posts, this one’s format is going to be a little different. Just following along.
Here is the string example we are working with. Inside the software installer, we have the name of the software, “Company_Software_” and the token, “0w6xBqqzwvw3PWkY87Tg301LTa2zRuPo09iBxamALBfs512rSgomfRROaohiwgJx9YH7bl9k72YwJ_riGzzD3wEFfXQ7jFZyi5USZfLtje2H68w” The question is how do you extract the token from this URL? Regex’s Matches we summon you!
Matches is one of the regex’s powerhouse tools. It’s a simple method that allows us to search a string for a match of our Regex. This will allow us to pull the token from URLs with PowerShell. First, it’s best to link to useful documentation. Here is the official Microsoft documentation. Sometimes it’s helpful. Another very useful tool can be found here.
PowerShell’s Regex can be expressed in many different ways. The clearest and most concise way is to use the -match flag.
$String -match $Regex
This of course produces a true or false statement. Then if you call the $matches variable, you will see all of the matches. Another way of doing this is by using the type method.
[regex]::Matches($String, $Regex)
This method is the same as above, but sometimes it makes more sense when dealing with complex items. The types method is the closest to the “.net” framework.
The Regex
Next, let’s take a look at the Regex itself. We are wanting to pull everything between TKN_ and the next /. This was a fun one.
'_TKN_([^/]+)'
The first part is the token. We want our search to start at _TKN_. This clears out all of the following information automatically: https://.download.software.net/windows/64/Company_Software. A next part is a group. Notice the (). This creates a group for us to work with. Inside this group, we are searching for all the characters inside []. We are looking for Everything starting at where we are, the TKN_ to a matching /. We want all the information so we place a greedy little +. This selects our token. This regex produces two matches. One with the word _TKN_ and one without. Thus we will want to capture the second output, aka index of 1.
$String -match '_TKN_([^/]+)'
$Matches[1]
Another way to go about this is the method-type model.
It same concept, instead this time we are able to parse the output and grab from group one.
Replace Method
Another way to go about this is by using replace. This method is much easier to read for those without experience in regex. I always suggest making your scripts readable to yourself in 6 months. Breaking up the string using replace makes sense in this light. The first part of the string we want to pull out is everything before the _TKN_ and the TKN itself. The second part is everything after the /. Thus, we will be using two replaces for this process.
$String -replace(".*TKN_",'')
Here we are removing everything before and the TKN_ itself. The .* ensures this. Then we wrap this code up and run another replace.
Now we have our token. This method is easier to follow.
Conclusion
In Conclusion, parsing URLs With PowerShell can be tough, but once you get a hang of it, life gets easier. Use the tools given to help understand what’s going on.
Documentation is a big deal in the world of IT. There are different levels of documentation. I want to go over in-place documentation for group policy. Comments in Group Policy are in-place documentation.
How to comment on a Group Policy
This process is not straightforward by any stretch of the imagination. The first and foremost way to add comments to a Group Policy is to use the GUI.
Open Group Policy Management Console
Select the policy you wish to comment
Right-click the policy in question and click edit
Inside the group policy management editor, right-click the policy name and click properties
Click the comment tab
Now enter your comment.
click Apply and Ok
The second way to add a comment in group policy is by using PowerShell. The Description of a policy is where the comment lives. Thus using the command Get-GPO will produce the comment. We will dig more into that later.
Get-GPO -name "Control Panel Access"
Using the Get-Member command we can pipe our Get-GPO command and see what is doable. You will be treated to a list of member types and what they are capable of. The description has a get and a set method to it. This means, you can set the description, aka comment.
(Get-GPO -name "Control Panel Access").Description = "This is my comment"
Suggestions
Here are a few suggestions for documenting the policy like this.
Use the(Get-date).ToString(“yyyy-MM-dd_hh_mm_ss”) at the beginning to setup your date time.
Then, I would add the author of the policy/comment
A quick description of the policy
Whether it’s a user or computer policy.
Any WMI filters.
More information here helps the next person or even yourself months down the road. Don’t go overboard as it can cause issues later. Using the ‘`n’ will create a new line which can be helpful as well.
Pulling Comments with PowerShell
Now that we have all the policies documented, we can pull the information from the in-place documentation. We do this by using the GPO-Get -All command. One way to do this is by using the select-object command and passing everything into a csv. I personally don’t like that, but it works.
I would like to go deeper into In-Place Documentation as it is very useful down the road. Powershell uses the #, other programs use different methods as well. If you get a chance to place in place documentation, life becomes easier when you are building out the primary documentation as you have a point of reference to look back at.
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