Book Image

Python Network Programming Techniques

By : Marcel Neidinger
Book Image

Python Network Programming Techniques

By: Marcel Neidinger

Overview of this book

Network automation offers a powerful new way of changing your infrastructure network. Gone are the days of manually logging on to different devices to type the same configuration commands over and over again. With this book, you'll find out how you can automate your network infrastructure using Python. You'll get started on your network automation journey with a hands-on introduction to the network programming basics to complement your infrastructure knowledge. You'll learn how to tackle different aspects of network automation using Python programming and a variety of open source libraries. In the book, you'll learn everything from templating, testing, and deploying your configuration on a device-by-device basis to using high-level REST APIs to manage your cloud-based infrastructure. Finally, you'll see how to automate network security with Cisco’s Firepower APIs. By the end of this Python network programming book, you'll have not only gained a holistic overview of the different methods to automate the configuration and maintenance of network devices, but also learned how to automate simple to complex networking tasks and overcome common network programming challenges.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Assigning variables in Python

Variables are named placeholders we can use to store and manipulate data. Variables point to a portion of the memory in which the data is stored. The kind of data that is stored within the memory portion that a variable is pointing to is known as the data type of that variable. These data types can be, for example, a string for text or an integer for a whole number. While some programming languages (such as C++ or Java) require you as the developer to explicitly define what kind of data you want to put into a variable, Python is dynamically typed. This means that the programming language will take care of assigning the correct data type to your variable, based on what you are putting in.

In this recipe, you will see how to assign variables in Python using the = operator and see the basic data types Python offers.

Getting ready

Open your code editor and start by creating a file called variables.py. Next, navigate your terminal to the same directory...