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)

Chapter 10: Incorporating your Python Scripts into an Existing Workflow by Writing Custom Ansible Modules

Ansible has, since its first release in early 2012, become a widely adopted tool for application deployment and infrastructure automation projects. Its vast ecosystem of pre-build modules allows you to describe the desired state of your infrastructure or application deployment using the YAML Ain't Markup Language (YAML) language. Being agentless, there is no need for a central controller that you send your instructions to for these to be carried out. Instead, your workstation running the description of tasks in the form of an Ansible playbook becomes the controller.

But have you ever wondered where all these modules that are pre-built for Ansible come from, and how they are implemented? In this chapter, we will get an introduction to developing your own Ansible modules. By developing modules, you can use Python to carry out complex workflows and then use Ansible and Ansible...