How to get order username and provisionDate for al

Question

Using Ruby I'm making a call like:

client = SoftLayer::Client.new(:username => user, :api_key => api_key, :timeout => 999999)
client['Account'].object_mask("mask[id, hostname, fullyQualifiedDomainName, provisionDate, datacenter[name], billingItem[recurringFee, associatedChildren[recurringFee], orderItem[description, order[userRecord[username], id]]], tagReferences[tagId, tag[name]], primaryIpAddress, primaryBackendIpAddress]").getHardware

But only some machines return a provisionDate and only some return orderItem information. How can I consistently get this information for each machine? What would cause one machine to return this data and another machine to not?

Example output:

{"fullyQualifiedDomainName"=>"<removed_by_me>",
 "hostname"=>"<removed_by_me>",
 "id"=>167719,
 "provisionDate"=>"",
 "primaryBackendIpAddress"=>"<removed_by_me>",
 "primaryIpAddress"=>"<removed_by_me>",
 "billingItem"=>
  {"recurringFee"=>"506.78",
   "associatedChildren"=>
    [<removed_by_me>]},
 "datacenter"=>{"name"=>"dal09"},
  "tagReferences"=>
  [{"tagId"=>139415, "tag"=>{"name"=>"<removed_by_me>"}},
   {"tagId"=>139417, "tag"=>{"name"=>"<removed_by_me>"}},
   {"tagId"=>140549, "tag"=>{"name"=>"<removed_by_me>"}}]}

To be clear, most machines return this data so I'm trying to understand why some do not.

Answer 1

Please see the following provisioning steps, below is a little flow to consider:

1.  Order a Server

Result: 
* An orderId is assigned to the server
* The createDate has a new value
* activeTransaction value is =  Null
* provisionDate value is = Null

2.  The order is approved

Result: 
* activeTransaction value is <> Null
* provisionDate value = Null

3.  Server  is already provisioned

Result:
* activeTransaction value is = Null
* provisionDate value has a New value
* billingItem property has a new value

To see if your machines have still ”activeTransaction”, please execute:

https://[username]:[apikey]@api.softlayer.com/rest/v3/SoftLayer_Hardware_Server/[server_id]/getActiveTransaction
Method: GET

Now, after reviewing your example response, this server had some problems when completing the provisioning; for that reason this step was completed manually but the provisionDate was not set for any reason(please open a ticket if you want that the provisionDate can be set) . This is a special case. I can see that another server has a similar behavior. But the other servers that don’t have provisionDate, have still ”activeTransaction<>null” (it means that these server are not provisioned yet).

EDIT:

Other property can help you to know that your machine has been already provisioned although other kind of transaction is being executed, is “hardwareStatus”, it should have “ACTIVE” value.

https://[username]:[apikey]@api.softlayer.com/rest/v3/SoftLayer_Account/getHardware?objectMask=mask[id, hostname, fullyQualifiedDomainName, provisionDate,hardwareStatus]
Method: GET

The response should be something like this:

{
"fullyQualifiedDomainName": "myhostname.softlayer.com"
"hostname": " myhostname"
"id": 1234567
"provisionDate": "2015-06-29T00:21:39-05:00"
"hardwareStatus": {
"id": 5
"status": "ACTIVE"
}