netdot 0.2.0

Python wrapper for Netdot Web API.

A python wrapper for UO-NetDot's RESTful API.

⚠ Disclaimer: From 0.2.0 onward, this API wrapper does not ensure support for the de facto Open Source version of NetDot (GitHub).

Install

This package is deployed to pypi.org. Download it with pip:

pip install netdot

Interactive Usage (Python interpreter)

ℹ Many methods of netdot.Repository and netdot.dataclasses are actually runtime-generated code. So, using the Repository interactively at the interpreter allows using features like tab completion and 'help()' to learn more.

Before getting into building a massive integration/tool, you might jump in and get some experience. Thankfully, we have the Python interpreter where we can jump in and do some testing!

# Enter the Python interpreter by running just "python" in your shell
$ python
Python 3.6.15 (default, Sep 10 2021, 00:26:58) 
... omitted for brevity...
>>> import netdot
>>>

ℹ The Python interpreter is often referred to as 'a REPL' (Read-Eval-Print-Loop). If you are unfamiliar with the Python interpreter, aka 'REPL', you might want to get started by reading "Using the REPL (in VSCode)" documentation.

With the netdot package imported, you can proceed with setting up a connecting and downloading some data!

Connecting in the interpreter

We have enabled interpreter-usage as a first-class feature. In particular, you will want to use the connect function like the following.

netdot.connect() returns a netdot.Repository instance.

>>> import netdot
>>> repo = netdot.connect()
What is the URL of the NetDot server? [https://nsdb.uoregon.edu]: ('enter' to use default)
NetDot username: myusername
NetDot password: ********** (using getpass module, to securely collect password)

That repo can be used for some interactive viewing of NetDot's data.

Example: Lookup IP Address in interpreter

As an example, you can use this API to lookup an IP Address.

>>> ipaddr = repo.get_ipblock_by_address('128.223.61.69')

Lets assume we want to determine who all may depend on this IP Address. We'll see if we can discover useful information from the used_by field of this IP Address, or its Subnet...

>>> ipaddr.used_by
None
>>> subnet = ipaddr.get_parent()
>>> subnet.used_by
'Network & Telecom Services'
>>> ip_container = subnet.get_parent()
>>> ip_container.used_by
'University of Oregon (3582)'

This demonstrates programatic read-access to the Address Space in NetDot.

ℹ Similar to get_parent, you'll notice you can get_children if you would like to!

Appendix: Using help() in interpreter

When in the interpreter session, it can be very useful to run help(netdot.Repository) to learn more about the Repository's capabilities.

ℹ If you've already established a connection via repo = netdot.connect(), then you can run help(repo) instead!

>>> help(netdot.Repository)
class Repository(builtins.object)
|  Work with Netdot API using Python objects.
|  
|  Methods defined here:
|  
|  __init__(self, netdot_url, user, password, parallelization_factor=11, **kwargs)
|      Initialize self.  See help(type(self)) for accurate signature.
|  
|  get_asset(repo:netdot_sites_manager.netdot.repository.Repository, id:int) -> ~T
|      Get info about a Asset from Netdot.
|      
|      Args: ... trimmed for brevity...