Issuing commands to a device using NAPALM
With our connection to the device established, we can go ahead and issue a command and retrieve the output of the said command as text. This is similar to what we have previously done, first with paramiko in Chapter 2, Connecting to Network Devices via SSH Using Paramiko, and second with netmiko in Chapter 4, Configuring Network Devices Using Netmiko. NAPALM offers a very convenient method to specify multiple commands at once and retrieve all the output in one dictionary in a nicely organized way. If your device does have a driver for NAPALM available, then this is, by far, the most convenient method to retrieve the output out of paramiko, netmiko, and NAPALM.
Getting ready
Open your code editor and create a file called send_command.py
. Next, in your Terminal, navigate to the same directory that you just created the send_command.py
file in.
How to do it…
We will use the following steps to establish a connection to our network...