Interacting with the JSS API
It is sometimes necessary to use the JSS's RESTful API in order to automate changes to computer records. This page will help you to understand how this works, using an example.
Background
The JSS at https://jss.orchard.ox.ac.uk features a full-featured RESTful API to allow programmatic interaction with the database. A good primer on how you can make use of it with Bash or Python can be found at:
You may also view the official resource documentation for the Orchard JSS at:
What follows is an example in Bash of how one might use the API to GET and PUT computer records.
Example
The Department of Computer Science have two labs of 20 computers each which all run VMWare Fusion with a single key, which is changed every year as they upgrade to a new major version. The installer for VMware Fusion in the Orchard Software Centre has a postinstall_script which reads the key from the computer's record on the JSS and serialises it accordingly.