Using ISAPI to search and download from SD card

[anderson110]

This link has a how to guide for using the storage management aspects of the http api:

http://www.hikvisioneurope.com/portal/index.php?dir=Integration and Development Materials/04--How to/&file=How to Integrate Storage function of Hikvision IP Camera(External).pdf


Much of it works as described. However, some essential parts of it seem not to work. Or at least, I can't figure out how to make them work. My goal is to download videos from the SD card programmatically. The guide explains that this can be done by doing a search query, and some returned information to download specified files.

Except that I can't get the search query to work, I always get:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ResponseStatus version="2.0" xmlns="http://www.hikvision.com/ver20/XMLSchema">
<requestURL>/ISAPI/ContentMgmt/search</requestURL>
<statusCode>4</statusCode>
<statusString>Invalid Operation</statusString>
<subStatusCode>methodNotAllowed</subStatusCode>
</ResponseStatus>

methodNotAllowed? Is this more intentionally crippled functionality that used to work?

Has anyone been able to make this work? It appears I'm in mostly uncharted waters here, based on some google searching.

 

[anderson110]

I was actually able to make this work after inspecting traffic generated by the web interface using wireshark.

An example of a valid request looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CMSearchDescription>
<searchID>anythinghere</searchID>
<trackList>
  <trackID>101</trackID>
</trackList>
<timeSpanList>
  <timeSpan>
    <startTime>2016-11-20T00:00:00Z</startTime>
    <endTime>2016-11-20T23:59:59Z</endTime>
  </timeSpan>
</timeSpanList>
<maxResults>40</maxResults>
<searchResultPostion>40</searchResultPostion>
<metadataList>
  <metadataDescriptor>//metadata.psia.org/VideoMotion</metadataDescriptor>
</metadataList>
</CMSearchDescription>

which can be sent to the server from a file with:

curl -X POST -d @file http://<user>:<pass>@<camera-ip>/ISAPI/ContentMgmt/search

and you should get back a response containing a list of videos. The howto shows how to use the response to generate download commands.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Has anyone been able to make this work? It appears I'm in mostly uncharted waters here, based on some google searching.

I think you are, not something I have done.
I have found though, when exploring the published APIs, that not everything works, it's presumably model and firmware dependent.

 

[Please enter the name by]

Does anyone here found a way to do that?

 

[James in Chicago]

I am using a Hitosino, AKA knock-off version, but I think it should be the same.

@anderson110, did you ever get past the search API to the download? I was able to successfully search using code similar to what you laid out, above.

At the download portal, I see the same files that were reported through the /ContentMgmt/search API, but if I try to download one of the files and watch the packets, I see a 400 error when I watch the network traffic.

I then submitted the same request through curl, with no luck. I got:

1. An authentication error. So I added -n, to provide my credentials through netrc.
2. A status of "Invalid Content." So I removed the long URL with the ampersands, improperly rendered in the GET request that I copied from the browser. I placed that information into an xml file, loaded through -d.
3. statusString of "Invalid Content" and "subStatusCode" of "badXmlContent", because I did not convert & to & so I did that. That gave me a playbackURI identical to the one reported through the (functioning) search API.
4. statusString of Invalid Operation and subStatusCode>methodNotAllowed for
curl -n -d @[download xml file] '[http to my camera ip]/ISAPI/ContentMgmt/download'

5. I also tried with a token and -n, and got the same error. With just the token, literally nothing happened.

So the search API is working for me, but I cannot download files.

Using ffplay, I can play the files fine over rtsp, but this is at "1x speed," which is really not what I'm looking for.

Ultimately I then tried simply removing the micro SD card from the device to copy the data, but the formatting was not readable on a Mac... and I was not able to get a driver to read it.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[andcha.exe]

I download via the NVR using playbackURI from json XML response like this..

My playbackURI

rtsp:/192.168.1.200/Streaming/tracks/101/?starttime=20200826T232510Z&endtime=20200826T235959Z&name=00000000808000000&size=1064978720

My curl request

curl -d "<downloadRequest><playbackURI>rtsp:/192.168.1.200/Streaming/tracks/101/?starttime=20200826T232510Z&amp;endtime=20200826T235959Z&amp;name=00000000808000000&amp;size=1064978720</playbackURI><userName>admin</userName><password>password</password></downloadRequest>" http://admin:password@192.168.1.200/ISAPI/ContentMgmt/download -o W:\temp\test.mp4

 

[James in Chicago]

Thanks, but that is basically the same as #4 above, except that I had the xml in a file instead of inline. And it gives me the same result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ResponseStatus version="2.0" xmlns="http://www.std-cgi.com/ver20/XMLSchema">
<requestURL>/ISAPI/ContentMgmt/download</requestURL>
<statusCode>4</statusCode>
<statusString>Invalid Operation</statusString>
<subStatusCode>methodNotAllowed</subStatusCode>
</ResponseStatus>

I am coming to suspect that it is simply not supported with this camera / firmware.

 

[James in Chicago]

OK solved: curl defaults to POST if -d is specified, but this is a GET request, so -X GET solves this.