Look at this:
https://github.com/colby-int/restic-json

Look at this: https://github.com/colby-int/restic-json

I know this exists. I want something that can query backrest since it already has all of this data available. Ideally the same info I can see via the web UI on backrest should also be available via API.

I did get the webhooks setup and working nicely but that is still just data being pushed out of backrest whereas I need to be able to query backrest for data directly.

For example: I would like to be able to query for info about a currently running backup to get the complete percentage and other info.

Another example: I want to setup a script to query the API and check previous backups to make sure all backups ran and completed successfully. Sort of like another tool that audits my backups to make sure things are running as it should. I currently have it message me every time a backup finishes but this is error prone since I have to manually verify them. The idea is to make this process automatic and an API would be perfect for this.

It's great to see the interest in scripting / additional automation around backrest, this is certainly something I'd like to support. Putting out more formal docs covering Backrest's architecture and API are on my road map -- hopefully some of which can be code-generated. Today however you'll need to read the proto definitions to understand the API.

Today the API is defined formally as a gRPC service https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest/blob/main/proto/v1/service.proto#L14-L63 which backrest makes accessible over an HTTP gateway which accepts binary requests OR protojson formatted requests. E.g.

curl -X POST 'localhost:9898/v1.Backrest/Backup' --data '{"value": "YOUR_PLAN_ID"}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json'

is a valid request to the Backup endpoint on the service to start a Backup.

Beyond this, for query support I suspect something like

curl -X POST 'localhost:9898/v1.Backrest/GetOperations' --data '{}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json'

should return the full operation history for your install, which may be quite a bit of JSON data. You can provide optional parameters i.e.

curl -X POST 'localhost:9898/v1.Backrest/GetOperations' --data '{"lastN": 1000, "selector": {"repoId": "myrepo"}}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json'

should return the last few thousand operations from the targeted repo myrepo. At the moment I expect that these APIs should be reasonably stable though it's possible that the the structures of the actual operations returned may change over time.

@garethgeorge thank you! This is exactly what I needed.

Here is a flow for an example of how to do this in Node-RED (import using the hamburger menu in NR):

[{"id":"f8d0ed6480b4a91b","type":"inject","z":"2abaa0e7be1a6d3b","name":"","props":[{"p":"payload"}],"repeat":"","crontab":"","once":false,"onceDelay":0.1,"topic":"","payload":"{\"lastN\": 1000, \"selector\": {\"repoId\": \"repo-id\"}}","payloadType":"jsonata","x":250,"y":460,"wires":[["4f3d186ba804c950"]]},{"id":"4f3d186ba804c950","type":"http request","z":"2abaa0e7be1a6d3b","name":"","method":"POST","ret":"obj","paytoqs":"ignore","url":"http://localhost:9898/v1.Backrest/GetOperations","tls":"","persist":false,"proxy":"","insecureHTTPParser":false,"authType":"","senderr":false,"headers":[{"keyType":"other","keyValue":"Content-Type","valueType":"other","valueValue":"application/json"}],"x":430,"y":460,"wires":[["900415374eb3824d"]]},{"id":"900415374eb3824d","type":"debug","z":"2abaa0e7be1a6d3b","name":"debug backrest api response","active":true,"tosidebar":true,"console":false,"tostatus":false,"complete":"true","targetType":"full","statusVal":"","statusType":"auto","x":660,"y":460,"wires":[]}]

Now I am looking into creating a module for Node-RED to make integrating with backrest much easier for people in the future. Should make scripting a bit easier.

Keeping an eye out for the docs update :)