ciscoconfparse2
Advanced tools
ciscoconfparse2 is the next generation of ciscoconfparse, which was the primary development package from 2007 until 2023.
ciscoconfparse2 is similar to an advanced grep and diff that handles multi-vendor network configuration files (such as those from Arista, Cisco, F5, Juniper, Palo Alto, etc).
Assume you have a bunch of interfaces in a configuration. How do you find which ones are shutdown?
One way is manually reading the whole Cisco IOS-XE configuration. Another option is ciscoconfparse2
>>> from ciscoconfparse2 import CiscoConfParse
>>>
>>> parse = CiscoConfParse("/path/to/config/file")
>>> intf_cmds = parse.find_parent_objects(["interface", "shutdown"])
>>>
>>> shut_intf_names = [" ".join(cmd.split()[1:]) for cmd in intf_cmds]
>>>
>>> shut_intf_names
['GigabitEthernet1/5', 'TenGigabitEthernet2/2', 'TenGigabitEthernet2/3']
>>>
Assume you have this IOS-XR bgp configuration:
router bgp 65534
bgp router-id 10.0.0.100
address-family ipv4 unicast
!
neighbor 10.0.0.37
remote-as 64000
route-policy EBGP_IN in
route-policy EBGP_OUT out
!
neighbor 10.0.0.1
remote-as 65534
update-source Loopback0
route-policy MANGLE_IN in
route-policy MANGLE_OUT out
next-hop-self
!
neighbor 10.0.0.34
remote-as 64000
route-policy EBGP_IN in
route-policy EBGP_OUT out
You can generate the list of EBGP peers pretty quickly with this script:
from ciscoconfparse2 import CiscoConfParse
parse = CiscoConfParse(
"/path/to/config/file"
) # Or read directly from a list of strings
# Get all neighbor configuration branches
branches = parse.find_object_branches(("router bgp", "neighbor", "remote-as"))
# Get the local BGP ASN
bgp_cmd = branches[0][0]
local_asn = bgp_cmd.split()[-1]
# Find EBGP neighbors for any number of peers...
for branch in branches:
# Extract individual instances for each BGP neighbor "branch"
neighbor_obj = branch[1]
remote_asn_obj = branch[2]
# Use the BaseCfgLine().split() method to get the peer address and ASN
neighbor_addr = neighbor_obj.split()[-1]
remote_asn = remote_asn_obj.split()[-1]
# Only grab EBGP neighbors...
if local_asn != remote_asn:
print(f"EBGP NEIGHBOR {neighbor_addr}, ASN {remote_asn}")
When you run that, you'll see:
$ python example.py
EBGP NEIGHBOR 10.0.0.37, ASN 64000
EBGP NEIGHBOR 10.0.0.34, ASN 64000
$
Many things are possible; see the tutorial.
ciscoconfparse2 distributes a CLI tool that will diff and grep various network configuration or text files.
The API examples are documented on the web
ciscoconfparse2 is a Python library that helps you quickly search for questions like these in your router / switch / firewall / load-balancer / wireless text configurations:
It can help you:
Speaking generally, the library examines a text network config and breaks it into a set of linked parent / child relationships. You can perform complex queries about these relationships.
In late 2023, I started a rewrite because ciscoconfparse is too large and has some defaults that I wish it didn't have. I froze ciscoconfparse PYPI releases at version 1.9.52; there will be no more ciscoconfparse PYPI releases.
I recommend that you upgrade to ciscoconfparse2.
Here's why, it:
BaseCfgLine() objectsignore_blank_lines=False (this could be a breaking change for old scripts).auto_commit keyword, which defaults TrueYears ago, I introduced a beta-quality feature called factory, where
I built vendor-specific syntax parsers to extract values from Cisco and other
vendor configs.
This feature turned out to be a bad design decision; however, it's also much more popular than I imagined.
Going forward I strongly discourage people from using factory features. There
will be no further development on vendor-specific factory parsers (such as
models_cisco.py).
I truly apologize for any disappointment.
Use pip for Python3.x... :
python -m pip install ciscoconfparse2
hier_configPyYAMLmacaddresspyparsingtraitletsrichtypeguardloguruThe ciscoconfparse2 python package requires Python versions 3.10+.
I will not. however, if it's truly a problem for your company, there are commercial solutions available (to include purchasing the project, or hiring me).
ciscoconfparse2 is licensed GPLv3
The word "Cisco" is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems.
ciscoconfparse2 was written by David Michael Pennington and other contributors.
FAQs
Parse, Audit, Query, Build, and Modify Cisco IOS-style and JunOS-style configs
We found that ciscoconfparse2 demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
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