Accessing network devices using libraries

So far, we have discussed how to run and work with libraries in Python and Go. Now, let’s focus on how to use Python and Go to access network devices, which is one of the most important points in our network automation work.

In Chapter 3, we discussed several methods to access network devices. One of the most popular ones is using a command-line interface (CLI). We also discussed SNMP, NETCONF, gRPC, and gNMI. In this section, we are going to explore a few examples of how to use libraries to access network devices, mainly using the CLI. Later, we are going to explain and show the libraries for accessing the network using other methods.

Libraries to access the network via a CLI

There are lots of libraries on the internet that can access network devices, and some of them might be obsolete or not used anymore. Here, we are going to present the most popular ones in chronological order, from the old to the newer ones.

The following...