pynetbox-config-helper

A command argument, Environment variable and config file parser wrapper for pynetbox.

pynetbox-config-helper allows you to easily read the config parameters needed for pynetbox (a URL and a token) from command arguments, environment variables and a config file, so that you dont have to repeat that code for every script you write and get a uniform interface for all your scripts.

Usage

Your code could look like this

from pynetbox_config_helper import build_argparser, resolve_config
import pynetbox

parser = build_argparser()  # this returns an ArgumentParser which you can extend further
settings = resolve_config(parser.parse_args())  # you get your config settings

nb = pynetbox.api(**settings)  # you get your pynetbox API instance
# ... you do your things

Now you place a config file in your config directory (~/.config/pynetbox_config_helper/config.ini on Linux, other paths on other systems, see Section Location of the config file. That config may contain multiple NetBox instances:

[Main]
Instance=prod

[prod]
URL=https://prod.example.com/api
Token=1234567890abcdef

[test]
URL=https://test.example.com/api
Token=testtoken123456

The instances in this example are called prod and test. The [Main] section specifies the default instance. In this case prod.

When you call your script it will automatically search for your config file, find your default instance and take the URL and Token from that instance. Alternativly you can also overwrite the Instance setting via the --instance command argument or the NETBOX_INSTANCE environment variable.

./script.py --instance "test"
NETBOX_INSTANCE="test" ./script.py

You can overwrite the Token and URL with the --token and --url arguments or NETBOX_TOKEN and NETBOX_URL environment variables.

Finally you can also specify a different config file with --config or NETBOX_CONFIG.

Generally commandline arguments are preferred over environment variables which are preferred over configuration settings. You can even specify the URL and Token via commandline arguments or environment variables and don't even need a config file.

Location of the config file

The default config file location is OS dependant. Internally we use platformdirs to find the user_config_dir.

On different systems this resolves to:

Linux

~/.config/pynetbox_config_helper/config.ini

MacOS

/Users/trentm/Library/pynetbox_config_helper/config.ini

Windows

C:\Users\trentm\AppData\Local\pynetbox_config_helper\config.ini