Before you Begin

Last published : Sep 25, 2026
This topic covers the prerequisites and limitations related to using the NITRO APIs.

Prerequisites

To use NITRO, you must have a basic understanding of the Citrix ADC appliance and you must make sure that the client application has one of the following:
  • Access to a Citrix ADC appliance.
  • To use REST APIs through HTTP, you must have a system to generate HTTP or HTTPS requests (payload in JSON format) to the Citrix ADC appliance. You can use any programming language or tool.
  • For Java clients, you must have a system where Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.5 or later is available. The JDK can be downloaded from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html.
    The NITRO library (available in <NITRO_SDK_HOME>/lib) must be installed on the client path. For installation instructions, read the <NITRO_SDK_HOME>/README.txt file.
  • For .NET clients, you must have a system with .NET framework 3.5 or later installed. The .NET framework can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/default.aspx.
    The NITRO library (available in <NITRO_SDK_HOME>/lib) must be installed on the client path. For installation instructions, read the <NITRO_SDK_HOME>/README.txt file.
  • For Python clients, you must have a system with Python 2.7 or above version.
    The NITRO library (available in <NITRO_SDK_HOME>/lib) must be installed on the client path. For installation instructions, read the <NITRO_SDK_HOME>/README.txt file.

Obtaining the NITRO SDK Package

The NITRO package is available as a tar file on the Downloads page of the configuration utility of the Citrix ADC appliance. You must download and untar the file to a folder on your local system. This folder is referred to as \&lt;NITRO_SDK_HOME\> in this documentation.
The folder contains the NITRO libraries in the lib subfolder. The libraries must be added to the client application classpath to access NITRO functionality. The \&lt;NITRO_SDK_HOME\> folder also provides samples and documentation that can help you understand the NITRO SDK.

Limitations

The section lists the Citrix ADC operations that cannot be performed by using NITRO API.
Note: These operations can be performed on the Citrix ADC CLI or the GUI.
  • install API and diff API on nsconfig resource
  • UI-internal APIs (update, unset, and get)
  • show ns info
  • shutdown
  • Application firewall API
  • importwsdl
  • importcustom
  • importxmlschema
  • importxmlerrorpage
  • importhtmlerrorpage
  • rmcustom
  • rmxmlschema
  • rmxmlerrorpage
  • rmhtmlerrorpage
  • CLI-specific API
  • scp
  • configaudit
  • show defaults
  • show permission
  • batch
  • source