'cisco_xe' device_type not mapping through to ntc-templates properly

[r1chardnoggin]

Hello,
I'm new here. I'm a network engineer by trade and I'm trying to get into network automation but I'm a noob on that front, so I'm trying to develop my skillset. I have installed netmiko and textfsm. However when I call on textfsm (use_textfsm=True) in my code it fails to use it to parse the output and I just get back unstructured data. I'm not entirely sure what I'm missing. I believe I have installed everything correctly but like I said I'm knew to this arena. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ktbyers]

Are you using ntc-templates? Does the given command you are trying to parse exist in the index file of ntc-templates?

Assuming you are using ntc-templates, this is probably more of a question that should be directed there.

Regards, Kirk

[r1chardnoggin]

I have the ntc-templates/templates directory as well as my export NET_TEXTFSM pointed to that location. I am executing 'show ip interface brief' and that is indeed in the ntc-templates.
Forgive my ignorance, but where do I need to address this question?

[ktbyers]

I would pip install ntc-templates and make sure you have Netmiko 3.3.2 installed also pip install netmiko==3.3.2

Does that fix the issue?

[r1chardnoggin]

pip3 install ntc-templates shows requirements already satisfied.
pip3 list | grep netmiko shows 3.3.2

[ktbyers]

Okay, next most likely problem is that the existing TextFSM template doesn't properly handle your particular output. That would be an ntc-template issue:

https://github.com/networktocode/ntc-templates

[r1chardnoggin]

I received some assistance over at github.com/networktocode/ntc-templates. I was asked to run the following...

output = net_connect.send_command("show ip interface brief")
from ntc_templates.parse import parse_output
output_parsed = parse_output(platform="cisco_ios", command="show ip interface brief", data=output)
print(output_parsed)

That produced the desired output. Then I was referred back here. Any thoughts on what I'm missing / doing wrong?

[r1chardnoggin]

I think I figured out my problem. I had set 'device_type': 'cisco_xe' which outputs the correct ouput from the issued command just in unstructured format. When I changed to 'device_type': 'cisco_ios' textfsm parses correctly and I then receive that data in a structured format. Rookie mistake I guess.

[ktbyers]

No, that is something I should fix on my side or at least warn you about. Let me flag it as a bug to see if we can improve that behavior.