Introduction

Overview

ciscoconfparse is a Python library, which parses through Cisco IOS-style configurations. It can:

  • Audit existing router / switch / firewall / wlc configurations against a text configuration template

  • Retrieve portions of the configuration

  • Modify existing configurations

  • Build new configurations

The library examines an IOS-style config and breaks it into a set of linked parent / child relationships; each configuration line is stored in a different IOSCfgLine object.

ciscoconfparse overview

Figure 1, An Example of Parent-line / Child-line relationships

Then you issue queries against these relationships using a familiar family syntax model. Queries can either be in the form of a simple string, or you can use regular expressions. The API provides powerful query tools, including the ability to find all parents that have or do not have children matching a certain template.

The package also provides a set of methods to query and manipulate the IOSCfgLine objects themselves. This gives you a flexible mechanism to build your own custom queries, because the IOSCfgLine objects store all the parent / child hierarchy in them.









What is ciscoconfparse good for?

After several network evolutions, you may have a tangled mess of conflicting or misconfigured network devices. Misconfigurations of proxy-arp, static routes, FHRP timers, routing protocols, duplicated subnets, cdp, console passwords, or aaa schemes have a measurable affect on up time and beg for a tool to audit them. However, manually scrubbing configurations is a long and error-prone process.

Audits aren’t the only use for ciscoconfparse. Let’s suppose you are working on a design and need a list of dot1q trunks on a switch with more than 400 interfaces. You can’t grep for them because you need the interface names of layer2 trunks; the interface name is stored on one line, and the trunk configuration is stored somewhere below the interface name. With ciscoconfparse, it’s really this easy…

>>> from ciscoconfparse import CiscoConfParse
>>> parse = CiscoConfParse('/tftpboot/largeConfig.conf')
>>> trunks = parse.find_parents_w_child("^interface", "switchport trunk")
>>> for intf in trunks:
...     print(intf)
interface GigabitEthernet 1/7
interface GigabitEthernet 1/23
interface GigabitEthernet 1/24
interface GigabitEthernet 1/30
interface GigabitEthernet 3/2
interface GigabitEthernet 5/10
<and so on...>

So you may be saying, that all sounds great, but I have no idea what you did with that code up there. If so, don’t worry… There is a tutorial following this intro. For more depth, I highly recommend Dive into Python3.

We don’t have Ciscos

Don’t let that stop you. CiscoConfParse parses anything that has a Cisco IOS style of configuration, which includes:

  • Cisco IOS, Cisco Nexus, Cisco IOS-XR, Cisco IOS-XE, Aironet OS, Cisco ASA, Cisco CatOS

  • Arista EOS

  • Brocade

  • HP Switches

  • Force 10 Switches

  • Dell PowerConnect Switches

  • Extreme Networks

  • Enterasys

As of CiscoConfParse 1.2.4, you can parse brace-delimited configurations into a Cisco IOS style (see Github Issue #17), which means that CiscoConfParse understands these configurations too:

  • Juniper Networks Junos, and Screenos

  • Palo Alto Networks Firewall configurations

  • F5 Networks configurations

  • Terraform .tf files

Quotes

These are a few selected public mentions about CiscoConfParse; I usually try not to share private emails without asking, thus the quotes aren’t long at this time.



CiscoConfParse Github issue #13



Reddit comment - 20150328







What’s new in version 1.0.0

I wrote ciscoconfparse in 2007 as literally my first Python project; through the years, my understanding of Python improved, and I also found many missing features along the way. Some of these features, like changing a configuration after it was parsed, required non-trivial changes to the whole project.

Starting in version 0.9, I initiated a major rewrite; several important changes were made:

  • Python3.x compatibility; Python2.4 deprecation

  • Major improvement in config parsing speed

  • Much better unit-test coverage

  • Too many bug fixes to count

  • New feature - ciscoconfparse inserts, deletes and appends config lines

  • Rearchitected the library, with an eye towards more future improvements

  • Revisions in scripting flow. All users are encouraged to use IOSCfgLine() objects whenever possible. Typically, you’ll start by matching them with find_objects(). Working directly with IOSCfgLine() objects makes your scripts less complicated and it also makes them faster than using legacy ciscoconfparse syntax.