Versions

The OpenStack Compute API uses both a URI and a MIME type versioning scheme. In the URI scheme, the first element of the path contains the target version identifier (e.g. https://servers.api.openstack.org/ v2.1/…). The MIME type versioning scheme uses HTTP content negotiation where the Accept or Content-Type headers contains a MIME type that identifies the version (application/vnd.openstack.compute.v2.1+json). A version MIME type is always linked to a base MIME type, such as application/json. If conflicting versions are specified using both an HTTP header and a URI, the URI takes precedence.

Example: Request with MIME type versioning

GET /214412/images HTTP/1.1
Host: servers.api.openstack.org
Accept: application/vnd.openstack.compute.v2.1+json
X-Auth-Token: eaaafd18-0fed-4b3a-81b4-663c99ec1cbb

Example: Request with URI versioning

GET /v2.1/214412/images HTTP/1.1
Host: servers.api.openstack.org
Accept: application/json
X-Auth-Token: eaaafd18-0fed-4b3a-81b4-663c99ec1cbb

Permanent Links

The MIME type versioning approach allows for creating of permanent links, because the version scheme is not specified in the URI path: https://api.servers.openstack.org/224532/servers/123.

If a request is made without a version specified in the URI or via HTTP headers, then a multiple-choices response (300) follows that provides links and MIME types to available versions.

Example: Multiple choices: JSON response

{
  "choices": [
      {
          "id": "v2.0",
          "links": [
              {
                  "href": "http://servers.api.openstack.org/v2/7f5b2214547e4e71970e329ccf0b257c/servers/detail",
                  "rel": "self"
              }
          ],
          "media-types": [
              {
                  "base": "application/json",
                  "type": "application/vnd.openstack.compute+json;version=2"
              }
          ],
          "status": "SUPPORTED"
      },
      {
          "id": "v2.1",
          "links": [
              {
                  "href": "http://servers.api.openstack.org/v2.1/7f5b2214547e4e71970e329ccf0b257c/servers/detail",
                  "rel": "self"
              }
          ],
          "media-types": [
              {
                  "base": "application/json",
                  "type": "application/vnd.openstack.compute+json;version=2.1"
              }
          ],
          "status": "CURRENT"
      }
  ]
}

The API with CURRENT status is the newest API and continues to be improved by the Nova project. The API with SUPPORTED status is the old API, where new features are frozen. The API with DEPRECATED status is the API that will be removed in the foreseeable future. Providers should work with developers and partners to ensure there is adequate time to migrate to the new version before deprecated versions are discontinued. For any API which is under development but isn’t released as yet, the API status is EXPERIMENTAL.

Your application can programmatically determine available API versions by performing a GET on the root URL (i.e. with the version and everything following that truncated) returned from the authentication system.

You can also obtain additional information about a specific version by performing a GET on the base version URL (such as, https://servers.api.openstack.org/v2.1/). Version request URLs must always end with a trailing slash (/). If you omit the slash, the server might respond with a 302 redirection request.

For examples of the list versions and get version details requests and responses, see API versions.

The detailed version response contains pointers to both a human-readable and a machine-processable description of the API service.