question Re: NIFI API and Provenance info - Unable to get info out in Support Questions

NIFI API and Provenance info - Unable to get info out

zzzz77 — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 21:34:53 GMT

When I try to run a query against the nifi 2.5.0 API to get info about provenance activities, it seems to be quite difficult.

I installed NIfi on my PC with no modifications and all default settings, and just use the default user and password that's created when you install it.

I run this in my local windows CMD window and get "unknown error" :

curl --insecure -X DELETE -H "Authorization: Bearer <my token> " https://localhost:8443/nifi-api/provenance/queries

Then I run this and get :

curl --insecure -X DELETE -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" https://localhost:8443/nifi-api/provenance/queries > test.txt

In text.txt file I get :

"An unexpected error has occurred. Please check the logs for additional details."

I'm starting to think the Provenance part of the API might be broken as it shouldn't be this hard?

I ran other API queries and they work fine.

What I'm trying to do is get a list of all files that have passed through my small local nifi installation so we can track what files have moved through nifi and when, as a form of monitoring.

Any help appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Re: NIFI API and Provenance info - Unable to get info out

VidyaSargur — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:34:39 GMT

@zzzz77, Welcome to our community! To help you get the best possible answer, I have tagged in our NiFi experts @MattWho @haridjh , who may be able to assist you further.

Please feel free to provide any additional information or details about your query. We hope that you will find a satisfactory solution to your question.

Re: NIFI API and Provenance info - Unable to get info out

MattWho — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:20:31 GMT

@zzzz77

When you executed your curl commands, did you check both the nifi-app.log and nifi-user.log for any ERROR or WARN log output that would provide more detail on the exception.

The Apache NIFi 2.x Provenance rest-api endpoint request should look more like this:

curl 'https://<HOSTNAME>:<PORT>/nifi-api/provenance' \ -H 'accept: application/json, text/plain, */*' \ -H 'content-type: application/json' \ -H 'Authorization:Bearer <TOKEN>' \ --data-raw '{"provenance":{"request":{"incrementalResults":false,"maxResults":1000,"summarize":true}}}' \ --insecure

Please help our community grow. If you found any of the suggestions/solutions provided helped you with solving your issue or answering your question, please take a moment to login and click "Accept as Solution" on one or more of them that helped.

Thank you,
Matt

Re: NIFI API and Provenance info - Unable to get info out

VidyaSargur — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 10:20:25 GMT

@zzzz77, Did the response assist in resolving your query? If it did, kindly mark the relevant reply as the solution to help others find the answer more easily in the future.

Re: NIFI API and Provenance info - Unable to get info out

zzzz77 — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 23:07:39 GMT

Hi Matt,

What I discovered is that when running nifi on windows 10 ( and possibly linux as well?), any passwords that have special characters like + or \ etc need to be converted to ascii I think it is.

so :

/ becomes %2F

+ becomes %2B

Once i did this, it worked OK.