Writing reusable code with functions
So far, all the code we have written has been executed directly. But what if we want to reuse some part of our code—maybe a workflow to check whether an IP address matches your infrastructure or user IP ranges—in another part of our script? We could copy and paste the code that we wrote, but what if some part of our workflow—for example, the network parts of our infrastructure devices—changes? We would have to change that information in every part of our script we copied the workflow to! This is not only labor-intensive but also very error-prone.
In this recipe, you will see how to create your own functions that you can use to make your workflows reusable.
Getting ready
Open your code editor and start by creating a file called functions.py. Next, navigate your terminal to the same directory in which you just created the functions.py file.