netconf-console2

A console application for interacting with NETCONF servers built on top of ncclient.

Note: this is a continuation (or a rename) of the project netconf-console; the old name was clashing with another product. Use netconf-console2 instead of netconf-console.

Requirements and installation

This application runs both in Python 2 and Python 3 environments. The only package required for running this application is ncclient; if this is installed, all other necessary packages are installed as dependencies. This means that if you can (successfully) run something like pip install ncclient on the target platform, all requirements should be met.

If you cannot, there still is a chance you can run it if the target platform supports at least packages six and lxml, which are commonly present; and if it contains paramiko or at least cryptography, you will be able to use SSH (without them you can only use plain and nonstandard TCP transport). The missing piece, ncclient, can be cloned and compiled to a "Python Wheel" -you can do this on any computer and copy the resulting .whl file to the target platform, it should work there. Pretty much the same holds for paramiko. You may also want to create a wheel for the application itself by running python setup.py bdist_wheel.

Installing and running the application

If you can and want to install the application and all necessary libraries, just run python setup.py install. Otherwise prepare all necessary .whl files and the script netconf-console2 to the target platform. If they are in the same directory, nothing else is needed, otherwise you may need to add the wheel files to PYTHONPATH before running the script.

Once installed or copied, you can just run the script with appropriate options - see below.

Command-line mode

The application can be run in two different modes: command-line mode and interactive (console) mode. The command-line mode allows you to request several RPC operations in one shell command. The command line would contain the operation command options (--get, --lock, etc.) in the desired order, all common options (such as --host, --port etc.) as well as command options (--db, --style); the command options are all used for the commands that accept them, so for example no two commands can address different datastores.

An example of such command line:

# netconf-console2 --host=example.com --db candidate --lock --edit-config=fragment1.xml \
--rpc=commit-confirmed.xml --unlock --sleep 5 --rpc=confirm.xml

Interactive mode

The interactive mode is started by --interactive (or -i). During an interactive session the user issues commands, one per line, with required arguments or options. The options are isolated now, so it is possible to have two commands in one session accessing different datastores. The interactive console provides limited support for tab-completion of commands, options, and their arguments.

The previous example can look like this:

# netconf-console2 --host=example.com -i
netconf> lock
netconf> edit-config fragment1.xml --db candidate
netconf> rpc commit-confirmed.xml
netconf> unlock
netconf> get-config
netconf> rpc confirm.xml
netconf>

Note: some commands (rpc, edit-config and others) may accept data from standard input in the command-line mode; this does not work in the interactive mode.

Some capabilities of the interactive mode can be used in command-line mode too using --expr pseudo-command: the argument is a command (including options) as if it was added in the interactive mode, such as

# netconf-console2 --expr 'get-config --db candidate' 'get-config'

Commands

A command may accept an argument and a number of options. In command-line mode, all option values are shared (see above); conversely, in interactive mode the option needs to be provided for every command where its desired value differs from the default. If a command does not accept given option, it is a syntax error to provide it in interactive mode (in command-line mode such situations are ignored).

hello
Send just the initial hello message and display the reply. Does not accept any arguments or options.

get
Send get RPC. Accepts options outputStyle, with-defaults, xpath. As an alternative to xpath, get accepts path as an argument.

get-config
Send get-config RPC. Accepts the same set of options as get plus db.

set
Send edit-config with single leaf assignment. Requires the assignment in the form `