NAME¶
Net::Appliance::Session::APIv2 - Back-compatibility with API version 2
VERSION¶
version 3.121640
INTRODUCTION¶
Version 3 of Net::Appliance::Session is a complete rewrite of the previous
version and so all client code will need updating. This is not ideal, but is
important for the module to survive, and have some much-requested features
implemented.
You can choose either to keep things just as they are on your system, with
version 2 API client code and version 2 of the library. Or you can modify your
code to be compatible with version 3 and install that newer version
(recommended). Finally there is the option to have version 3 installed but use
a simple compatibility layer to interface from version 2 client code.
APIv2 Back-Compat Module¶
If you have installed version 3 of the library but don't wish to update client
code, this APIv2 Back-Compat Module
might be sufficient for your
application to keep working. In your code, wherever you have "use
Net::Appliance::Session", replace it with:
use Net::Appliance::Session::APIv2;
The effect is that a wrapper is placed around the version 3 API such that your
version 2 client code should continue to work. Be aware that the author is not
planning to add any features to this compatibility layer, and in fact some
features are missing (those which cannot be mapped into the new API). The list
of missing features is:
- •
- Custom phrasebooks cannot be loaded (i.e. the
"Source" param to "new()" doesn't work)
- •
- The "error()" method is not implemented
- •
- Error strings in output from the device are not acted
upon
- •
- All exceptions are of class
"Net::Appliance::Session::Exception"
- •
- Exceptions probably don't contain the same amount of useful
information
A note on error handling¶
A large part of the philosophy of earlier versions was that the module could
identify certain error conditions at the CLI by the syntax used in output
messages, and act accordingly. Together with that, client code was encouraged
to capture exceptions and check for various conditions, exception types, and
messages.
When automating a CLI, this doesn't really make much sense. If a human makes a
mistake, the CLI shows an error. A computer-driven script should
never
make a mistake - it will have been tested and developed. It's unnecessary
overhead to check for errors all the time and attempt to recover. Of course,
the remote device might still have a problem and report it, or die, but in
that case version 3 of the module will still itself "die" with an
error message.
So any version 2 code you have which handles exceptions by class, and checks for
Net::Appliance::Session::Exception will be okay, but other classes used in
earlier versions are not supported in the compatibility layer.
Porting to API Version 3¶
The changes are not too severe - you should recognise all the method calls. Some
features have been removed, and you will need to rewrite any custom
phrasebooks. You should go through each of the following sections and make
changes as required.
Method Parameter Passing¶
You must provide parameters to the "new", "connect", and
"begin_privileged" methods as a
hash reference with named
parameters. There is no longer the option to have unnamed parameters as a
bare list. Here is an example of how things must be, for each of these
methods:
my $s = Net::Appliance::Session->new({
personality => 'ios',
transport => 'SSH',
host => 'hostname.example',
});
eval {
$s->connect({ name => 'username', password => 'loginpass' });
$s->begin_privileged({ password => 'privilegedpass' });
# etc.....
Parameters to "new"¶
As shown above, you can no longer provide a bare device host name, and nothing
else, to "new". You
must provide the "hostname",
"transport" and "personality".
The "personality" parameter is the direct equivalent of
"Platform" in the previous version 2 API. The Transports on offer
are the same (except they now work on Windows natively - no cygwin required).
Parameters to "cmd"¶
As before, you can pass in a single string statement which will be issued to the
connected CLI, followed by a carriage return. The method returns the complete
response either in one Perl Scalar or an Array, depending on what you assign
the result of the method call to:
my $config = $s->cmd('show running-config');
my @interfaces = $s->cmd('show interfaces brief');
In addition, you can pass a Hash Reference as the
second parameter, with
some additional options. This includes a custom timeout for the command,
custom Regular Expressions to match the completed response, and the option to
suppress addition of a carriage return. See the
Net::CLI::Interact::Role::Engine manual page for further details.
Custom Phrasebooks¶
Sadly it has not been possible to automatically import existing version 2 custom
phrasebooks into the version 3 module. The built-in phrasebook is however
still included, just as before.
Please see the comprehensive documentation for Net::CLI::Interact::Phrasebook
and the "add_library" method of this module, to see how to construct
and install your custom phrasebook. There's also the Cookbook which gives
examples of the new language.
Error and Exception Handling¶
As explained above, there are no longer any fancy exception objects, and instead
just simple Perl "die" calls when things go wrong. Typically this
will be a timeout in communications at the connected CLI, or a bug in the
module code. Check out the example script included with this distribution for
a demonstration of handling these errors.
Troubleshooting¶
Whereas before you used the "input_log" method, please use the
"set_global_log_at" method instead, for similar dumping of
communications (and more). There's actually much more powerful logging, if you
check out the main Net::Appliance::Session manual pages.
$s->set_global_log_at('debug');
Useful New Features¶
See the extensive documentation of Net::Appliance::Session or the underlying
Net::CLI::Interact module for details. You have
a lot more on offer
with the version 3 API.
AUTHOR¶
Oliver Gorwits <oliver@cpan.org>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE¶
This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Oliver Gorwits.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.