contributing.md

CONTRIBUTING

There are two ways to contribute:

1. Create a new template.
2. Update an existing template.

Creating a new template

1. Create a TextFSM template for a given show command and store it in ntc_templates
2. Add that TextFSM template to the index file.
3. Create a test input file (containing the raw output of the show command) and give it the extension .raw.
4. Create a file containing the correct parsed results and give it the extentsion .parsed.
5. Store both the .raw and .parsed files in tests/platform
6. (Optional) If creating more than one test case, i.e. more than one .raw and .parsed files, repeat steps 3-5 but add a test_suffix_number to the files as described in File naming conventions below.

Updating an existing template

1. Update the existing TextFSM template in ntc_templates
2. Repeat steps 3-6 from Creating a new template above.

File naming conventions

All files submitted for a show command should follow a strict naming convention:

base_filename + [_test_suffix_number] + extension

base_filename: platform_commandname Template extension: .template Raw test file extension: .raw Parsed test file extension: .parsed test_suffix_number: <integer>

Example: Cisco's show vlan command template file: cisco_ios_show_vlan.template raw test file: cisco_ios_show_vlan.raw parsed test file: cisco_ios_show_vlan.parsed alternate raw test file: cisco_ios_show_vlan_1.raw alternate parsed test file: cisco_ios_show_vlan_1.parsed

Template file testing

To test a template, run test-template.yml as a playbook and follow the prompts.

Note:

• platform should be prefixed by a valid netmiko device_type
  • See "platform Naming Conventions" in the README
• device support in netmiko is required.

Documentation on TextFSM: https://github.com/google/textfsm/wiki/TextFSM