pyats_send_commands

This task plugin uses PyATS devices execute method to send multiple commands to devices pre-processing commands accordingly.

Pre-processing includes:

• Check and if any - retrieve per-host commands from host’s inventory data task.host.data["__task__"]["commands"] or from task.host.data["__task__"]["filename"]

• If command is a multi-line string, split it to individual lines or form a list with single command

• Iterate over commands list and remove empty strings

• Iterate over commands and replace new_line_char with \n new line

There are several modes that pyats_send_commands task plugin can operate in:

1. If parse is true and device platform supports it, send commands one by one parsing their output waiting for interval in between commands if interval provided, if no parser available for this platform to parse command output, exception message returned for such a command

2. If interval argument provided, commands send one by one to device using execute method sleeping for given interval between commands

3. If via argument refers to connections pool object, send commands in parallel, commands execution order not guaranteed

4. By default, all commands supplied to device’s connection execute method as is

Dependencies:

• PyATS library required

• Genie library required

Useful links:

• Genie parsers

Sample Usage

Given this inventory:

host-1:
  connection_options:
    pyats:
      extras:
        devices:
          host-1:
            os: iosxe
            credentials:
              default:
                username: nornir
                password: nornir
            connections:
              default:
                protocol: ssh
                ip: 10.0.1.4
                port: 22
              vty_1:
                protocol: ssh
                ip: 10.0.1.4
                pool: 3

Code to invoke pyats_send_commands task:

from nornir_salt.plugins.tasks import pyats_send_commands

# send via "default" connection
output_via_default = nr.run(
    task=pyats_send_commands,
    commands=["show run", "show clock"]
)

# send via vty_1 connection pool of 3 SSH connections
output_via_pool = nr.run(
    task=pyats_send_commands,
    commands=["show run", "show clock"],
    via="vty_1"
)

# send via "default" connection with 5s interval between commands
output_with_interval = nr.run(
    task=pyats_send_commands,
    commands=["show run", "show clock"],
    interval=5
)

# send commands and parse output
output_parse = nr.run(
    task=pyats_send_commands,
    commands=["show hostname", "show clock"],
    parse=True
)

Returns Nornir results object with individual tasks names set equal to commands sent to device.

Reference

nornir_salt.plugins.tasks.pyats_send_commands.pyats_send_commands(task: nornir.core.task.Task, commands: list = None, interval: int = None, new_line_char: str = '_br_', via: str = 'default', parse: bool = False, split_lines: bool = True, **kwargs)

Nornir Task function to send show commands to devices using PyATS Unicon module.

Per-host commands can be provided using host’s object data attribute with __task__ key with value set to dictionary with commands key containing a list of or a multiline string of commands to send to device, e.g.:

print(host.data["__task__"]["commands"])

["ping 1.1.1.1 source 1.1.1.2", "show clock"]

Alternatively, __task__ can contain filename key with commands string to send to device.

Parameters

• kwargs – (dict) used with connection’s execute or testbed’s parse method as **kwargs

• commands – (list or str) list or multiline string of commands to send to device

• interval – (int) interval between sending commands, default is None - commands send simultaneously

• new_line_char – (str) characters to replace in commands with new line \n before sending command to device, default is _br_, useful to simulate enter key

• via – (str) testbed inventory connection name, default is default

• parse – (bool) if True, parses command output and returns structured data

• split_lines – (bool) if True split multiline string to commands, send multiline string to device as is otherwise

Return result

Nornir result object with task results named after commands