Introduction

What is pyNetX?

pyNetX is a Python library for managing NETCONF sessions with network devices. It provides a clean, high-level API for performing operations such as connecting to devices, retrieving or editing configurations, and subscribing to notifications. Both synchronous and asynchronous methods are available, enabling pyNetX to be used in a variety of application architectures, from simple one-off scripts to large-scale event-driven frameworks.

Key Features

  1. NETCONF Support

    • Full suite of NETCONF operations, including get()/get-config()

    for retrieval, edit-config() for updates, and more.

  2. Synchronous & Asynchronous API - Choose either blocking (sync) or non-blocking (async) methods for each operation. - Async support integrates with Python’s built-in asyncio library.

  3. Thread Pool Management

    • A global thread pool manages concurrent tasks, ensuring thread safety

    and efficient resource usage.

  4. Error Handling with Custom Exceptions

    • pyNetX defines Python exceptions for common NETCONF errors, such as

    authentication failure, connection refusal, or channel problems.

  5. C++ Speed Underneath

    • Uses C++ (via pybind11) for heavy lifting (SSH communication, XML parsing, etc.),

    while exposing a Pythonic interface.

System Requirements

  • Python 3.11+

  • Libraries: - libxml2, libxslt for XML parsing - libssh2, tinyxml2, and possibly audit (depends on your OS)

  • Build Dependencies (if installing from source): - setuptools, wheel, cmake, scikit-build, pybind11

On Debian or Ubuntu, for example, you might install required packages with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libssh2-1-dev tinyxml2-dev audit

Why Use pyNetX?

  1. One-stop: Instead of piecing together multiple libraries for SSH and XML, pyNetX offers a single library specifically tailored for NETCONF.

  2. Performance: Written in C++ with Python bindings, providing low-level performance without losing Python’s ease of use.

  3. Async-Ready: Perfect for large-scale or event-driven architectures— run multiple device interactions in parallel with full asyncio support.

Getting Started

  1. Install pyNetX from PyPI:

    pip install pyNetX

    Or from source:

    git clone https://github.com/jackofsometrades99/pyNetX.git
cd pyNetX
python setup.py install

  2. Basic Usage:

    from pyNetX import NetconfClient

# Synchronous example
client = NetconfClient(hostname="192.168.1.1", port=830,
                       username="admin", password="admin")
client.connect_sync()
running_config = client.get_config_sync(source="running")
print(running_config)
client.disconnect_sync()

  3. Check Out the API: - See Examples for more examples and usage patterns. - Refer to API Reference for a complete list of methods and parameters.

Contributing

We welcome contributions! If you would like to fix bugs, improve documentation, or add new features:

  1. Fork the GitHub repository.

  2. Create a new branch and make your changes.

  3. Submit a pull request and wait for feedback.

Next Steps

Ready to dive deeper? Explore the next sections for detailed usage instructions, advanced features, and examples: