ncclient: Python library for NETCONF clients

ncclient is a Python library that facilitates client-side scripting and application development around the NETCONF protocol. ncclient was developed by Shikar Bhushan. It is now maintained by Leonidas Poulopoulos (@leopoul)

Docs: http://ncclient.readthedocs.org

PyPI: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ncclient

Requirements:

• Python 2.7 or Python 3.4+
• setuptools 0.6+
• Paramiko 1.7+
• lxml 3.3.0+
• libxml2
• libxslt

If you are on Debian/Ubuntu install the following libs (via aptitude or apt-get):

• libxml2-dev
• libxslt1-dev

Installation:

[ncclient] $ sudo python setup.py install

or via pip:

pip install ncclient

Examples:

[ncclient] $ python examples/juniper/*.py

Usage

Get device running config

Use either an interactive Python console (ipython) or integrate the following in your code:

from ncclient import manager

with manager.connect(host=host, port=830, username=user, hostkey_verify=False) as m:
    c = m.get_config(source='running').data_xml
    with open("%s.xml" % host, 'w') as f:
        f.write(c)

As of 0.4.1 ncclient integrates Juniper's and Cisco's forks, lots of new concepts have been introduced that ease management of Juniper and Cisco devices respectively. The biggest change is the introduction of device handlers in connection paramms. For example to invoke Juniper's functions annd params one has to re-write the above with device_params={'name':'junos'}:

from ncclient import manager

with manager.connect(host=host, port=830, username=user, hostkey_verify=False, device_params={'name':'junos'}) as m:
    c = m.get_config(source='running').data_xml
    with open("%s.xml" % host, 'w') as f:
        f.write(c)

Device handlers are easy to implement and prove to be futureproof.

Supported device handlers

• Juniper: device_params={'name':'junos'}
• Cisco CSR: device_params={'name':'csr'}
• Cisco Nexus: device_params={'name':'nexus'}
• Cisco IOS XR: device_params={'name':'iosxr'}
• Cisco IOS XE: device_params={'name':'iosxe'}
• Huawei: device_params={'name':'huawei'}
• Alcatel Lucent: device_params={'name':'alu'}
• H3C: device_params={'name':'h3c'}
• HP Comware: device_params={'name':'hpcomware'}
• Server or anything not in above: device_params={'name':'default'}

Changes | brief - v0.5.3

• Add notifications support
• Add support for ecdsa keys
• Various bug fixes

Contributors

• v0.5.3: Justin Wilcox, Stacy W. Smith, Mircea Ulinic, Ebben Aries, Einar Nilsen-Nygaard, QijunPan
• v0.5.2: Nitin Kumar, Kristian Larsson, palashgupta, Jonathan Provost, Jainpriyal, sharang, pseguel, nnakamot, Алексей Пастухов, Christian Giese, Peipei Guo, Time Warner Cable Openstack Team
• v0.4.7: Einar Nilsen-Nygaard, Vaibhav Bajpai, Norio Nakamoto
• v0.4.6: Nitin Kumar, Carl Moberg, Stavros Kroustouris
• v0.4.5: Sebastian Wiesinger, Vincent Bernat, Matthew Stone, Nitin Kumar
• v0.4.3: Jeremy Schulman, Ray Solomon, Rick Sherman, subhak186
• v0.4.2: katharh, Francis Luong (Franco), Vincent Bernat, Juergen Brendel, Quentin Loos, Ray Solomon, Sebastian Wiesinger, Ebben Aries
• v0.4.1: Jeremy Schulman, Ebben Aries, Juergen Brendel