forward-sdk

Python SDK for the Forward Networks REST API.

A Forward Networks Field Integration. Built and maintained by the field team to make integration work easier. It is not a supported Forward Networks product: it carries no SLA, and issues are handled on a best-effort basis rather than through Forward Support.

Status: pre-release. The public API is not yet stable.

pip install forward-sdk

from forward_sdk import ForwardClient

with ForwardClient.from_env() as client:
    for network in client.networks.list():
        print(network.id, network.name)

    rows = client.nqe.query(
        "foreach device in network.devices select {name: device.name}",
        network_id="101",
    )

Authentication is HTTP basic with an API token: its access key is the username and its secret is the password.

What it covers

Every operation in Forward's API. The groups integrations use most -- NQE, snapshots, networks, devices and device tags -- are hand-written with curated names and behaviour such as waiting for a snapshot to finish processing. The rest are generated from the OpenAPI description Forward produces from its own server code.

Both a synchronous and an asynchronous client, with identical surfaces.

Notable

NQE first. Running a query, paging or streaming the results, diffing a query across snapshots, and publishing queries to the library are all first-class. Paging carries guard rails for the ways it can go wrong in production: a result set that ends early, a server that stops advancing, a query far larger than expected.

Typed, but tolerant. Responses are pydantic models. Unknown fields and unknown enum values are preserved rather than rejected, so a Forward release that adds either does not break an older SDK. NQE rows stay dict[str, Any], because a query's columns are defined by the query.

Honest about refusals. A missing licence, a feature absent from your deployment, and a role-based denial all arrive as the same status codes, so the SDK does not pretend to tell them apart. It gives you Forward's own explanation and a documented hint about what gates that operation.

Documentation

https://forwardnetworks.github.io/forward-python-sdk/

• Quickstart
• Configuration
• NQE guide
• Availability and gating
• Migrating from the NetBox plugin or the Nautobot plugin

Requirements

Python 3.10 or newer.

Licence

MIT.