add custom options on host

[gde]

Hello,

I've looked around quickly using the search of the forum but didn't find a topic on this.

I think it would be nice to be able to add custom options on a device. I'm in a situation where I need to get data after filling in some credentials and specify a certain port number. I've found a dataquery for parsing data through jmxproxy but all these informations are hardcoded in the script… needless de say it doesn't scale well when you have lots of devices to monitor with different usernames/password/port.

if I could create my own options where I could add these informations for each devices, I would have been able to call these options as variable in the data query xml file.

what do you guys think ?

[gandalf]

First of all, extending the data shown on host edit screen can be done by creating a plugin. Thus, you may either extend the host table (not recommended) or create a new table using the host_id as an index.
Such a plugin will perhaps require to extend the polling process as well to extend data capture. But it's hard to give advice without more information about your case.
R.

[gde]

I admit, I didn't look if anybody created a plugin for it before typing my text. actually, I forgot plugins could be created. I'm not php developper but I'll probably look at it if it doesn't exist.
I'm unexperienced here but don't quite see how the polling process could be affected. All I want is to just create a serie key/value pair that I could reuse on a script query xml file. I'll look into it…

thanks

[Howie]

I think I might write this plugin. I have a requirement to keep track of a number of IDs and other custom fields per device (e.g. to choose who to send alerts to).

I think that to use those fields in a query would require patching Cacti though - I don't think any existing hooks allow you to extend that part of Cacti, do they, Gandalf?

[cigamit]

It really depends on how exactly you want to use them, but we do have a hook for "valid_host_fields". Check the top of /include/global_form.php.