Connecting to a network device using ncclient
With the introduction to the NETCONF and YANG modules out of the way, we can now discuss how to connect to a network device using Python so that we can later issue a NETCONF command to it. NETCONF is built on top of the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol, and while we could use a generic library that implements this protocol, the ncclient
package has been purposely built to be used to connect to network devices using NETCONF and, therefore, issue RPC calls to the device.
In this example, we'll set up our connection details, open a connection, and then retrieve the list of all the YANG modules that are currently supported by the device we are connecting to. Then, we'll filter this list of available YANG modules to identify the OpenConfig
modules and print the list of found modules back to the user.
Getting ready
Open your code editor and create a file called connect.py
. Next, in your Terminal, navigate to the same directory...