ChatGPT knows the Zimbra API’s

Zimbra has many API’s to make it easy for system administrators to automate tasks, such as account creation, distribution list management, quota management etc. In many cases you will be using the SOAP and REST API’s or command line tools such as zmprov and zmmailbox.

While there is documentation of these API’s on the Zimbra wiki, often it is not easy to find how to implement things exactly, and it will take a lot of time, reading and trial and error to get things to work.

Prompt ChatGPT for your Zimbra API needs

We found that ChatGPT 4.0 is very good in answering Zimbra API related questions. It usually takes about 2 prompts to get an answer from the AI that can be readily copy/pasted for use with Zimbra. ChatGPT 4.0 costs around USD 25/mo. Compared to the free ChatGPT 3.5, I found the answers from 4.0 to be more accurate (can be used without editing). The answers from 3.5 work sometimes, but take more prompts and still need some manual editing before they can be used on Zimbra.

Here are 2 examples of getting a Zimbra job done using ChatGPT 4.0.

Obtain an authentication token

I am prompting ChatGPT 4.0 the following: Provide the curl command to get a Zimbra Authentication Token

Answer from the AI:

curl -k --header "Content-Type: application/soap+xml" -d '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
  <soap:Header>
    <context xmlns="urn:zimbra">
      <userAgent name="zmprov" version="0.1"/>
    </context>
  </soap:Header>
  <soap:Body>
    <AuthRequest xmlns="urn:zimbraAccount">
      <account by="adminName">admin@example.com</account>
      <password>adminPassword</password>
    </AuthRequest>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>' "https://your-zimbra-server.com/service/soap/"

The AI also provides instructions on how to use the code snippet, when I copy/paste this code block, and fill my username, password and Zimbra server URL as instructed, I get a Zimbra authentication token that I can use for further API requests.

Export my calendar from Zimbra

Now that I have a Zimbra authentication token, lets ask the AI to use it to export my Zimbra calendar. I am prompting ChatGPT 4.0 the following: Provide the curl command to export my calendar from Zimbra, I would like to authenticate using a Zimbra Auth Token passed as a cookie.

Answer from the AI:

curl -b "ZM_AUTH_TOKEN=your_auth_token" "https://your-zimbra-server/service/home/[username]/calendar?fmt=ics" -o "your_calendar.ics"

When I copy/paste that command with my actual username, authentication token and Zimbra URL, I do indeed get a copy of my calendar in ICS format.

Of course I could have done this by going through the Zimbra documentation, but depending on the task at hand ChatGPT may be faster than me reading the documentation.