besapi

besapi is a Python library that makes it easy to work with the BigFix REST API. It handles authentication, requests, and XML parsing for you, so you can focus on automating your BigFix environment instead of wrangling raw HTTP and XML.

It also includes bescli, an interactive command-line interface for exploring the REST API — great for trying things out before writing any code.

Installation

pip install besapi

Quick Start

Connect to your BigFix root server and start making requests:

import besapi

b = besapi.besapi.BESConnection(
    "my_username", "my_password", "https://rootserver.domain.org:52311"
)
rr = b.get("sites")

# Every request returns a RESTResult with several handy views of the response:
#   rr.request - the original requests object
#   rr.text    - the raw text returned by the server
#   rr.besxml  - the response as an XML string
#   rr.besobj  - the response as an lxml.objectify.ObjectifiedElement

print(rr)

<BESAPI xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="BESAPI.xsd">
<ExternalSite Resource="http://rootserver.domain.org:52311/api/site/external/BES%20Support">
<Name>BES Support</Name>
</ExternalSite>
<!---...--->
<CustomSite Resource="http://rootserver.domain.org:52311/api/site/custom/Org">
<Name>Org</Name>
</CustomSite>
<CustomSite Resource="http://rootserver.domain.org:52311/api/site/custom/Org%2fMac">
<Name>Org/Mac</Name>
</CustomSite>
<CustomSite Resource="http://rootserver.domain.org:52311/api/site/custom/Org%2fWindows">
<Name>Org/Windows</Name>
</CustomSite>
<CustomSite Resource="http://rootserver.domain.org:52311/api/site/custom/ContentDev">
<Name>ContentDev</Name>
</CustomSite>
<OperatorSite Resource="http://rootserver.domain.org:52311/api/site/operator/mah60">
<Name>mah60</Name>
</OperatorSite>
<ActionSite Resource="http://rootserver.domain.org:52311/api/site/master">
<Name>ActionSite</Name>
</ActionSite>
</BESAPI>

Working with results

The besobj attribute lets you navigate the XML response like a regular Python object:

>>> rr.besobj.attrib
{'{http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance}noNamespaceSchemaLocation': 'BESAPI.xsd'}

>>> rr.besobj.ActionSite.attrib
{'Resource': 'http://rootserver.domain.org:52311/api/site/master'}

>>> rr.besobj.ActionSite.attrib["Resource"]
'http://rootserver.domain.org:52311/api/site/master'

>>> rr.besobj.ActionSite.Name
'ActionSite'

>>> rr.besobj.OperatorSite.Name
'mah60'

>>> for cSite in rr.besobj.CustomSite:
...     print(cSite.Name)
...
Org
Org/Mac
Org/Windows
ContentDev

Downloading, uploading, and deleting content

# save a task to a file:
rr = b.get("task/operator/mah60/823975")
with open("/Users/Shared/Test.bes", "wb") as bes_file:
    bes_file.write(rr.text.encode("utf-8"))

# delete a task:
b.delete("task/operator/mah60/823975")

# create or update a task from a file:
with open("/Users/Shared/Test.bes") as bes_file:
    b.post("tasks/operator/mah60", bes_file)
    b.put("task/operator/mah60/823975", bes_file)

Looking for more? The examples folder has ready-to-run scripts for many common tasks — exporting sites, importing content, taking actions, running session relevance, and more.

Command-Line Interface

The included bescli interactive shell is the fastest way to poke around the REST API:

$ python -m bescli

BigFix> login
User [mah60]: mah60
Root Server (ex. https://server.institution.edu:52311): https://my.company.org:52311
Password:
Login Successful!
BigFix> get help
...
BigFix> get sites
...
BigFix> get sites.OperatorSite.Name
mah60
BigFix> get help/fixlets
GET:
/api/fixlets/{site}
POST:
/api/fixlets/{site}
BigFix> get fixlets/operator/mah60
...

Requirements

Python 3.9 or later
- besapi 1.1.3 was the last version with partial Python 2 support
lxml
requests
cmd2 (for the CLI)

All dependencies are installed automatically by pip.

More Examples Using besapi

Building a Standalone Binary

You can package the CLI into a single executable with PyInstaller:

pyinstaller --clean --collect-all besapi --onefile .\src\bescli\bescli.py

Note: using UPX to compress the binary only saves about 2MB out of 16MB on Windows.

BigFix REST API Documentation

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome! If you have a script built on besapi that others might find useful, consider adding it to the examples.

License

MIT License

Release files for besapi 4.2.0

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for besapi 4.2.0
File	Size	Uploaded
besapi-4.2.0.tar.gz	51.1 kB	Sep 24, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for besapi 4.2.0
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
besapi-4.2.0-py3-none-any.whl 42.8 kB Sep 24, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 93.9 kB

Release files / besapi-4.2.0.tar.gz

Download URL	besapi-4.2.0.tar.gz
Size	51.1 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`16c8219b2e5ed782fd4c28994b605eb8111e2960c01c97ab0544b35b582b219b`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`3304902c45a1bd07040ce4f79757c2e29847a7bd5180379e292da4a2306d9673`
Upload date	Sep 24, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14`

Release files / besapi-4.2.0-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	besapi-4.2.0-py3-none-any.whl
Size	42.8 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`38eac5c73f13c524d45c60cda3727d94869f77504d70c9df9c69d535e93e25b6`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`428e1fc06329f78981b1bf2aa837da515783f70e30c9d30ae24343904a917328`
Upload date	Sep 24, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14`