NetBot is my final project for CS50 Python. It uses Slack Bolt to create a socket that listens for Slack messages. The application will read the Slack message and respond accordingly.to execute commands on network devices. The link above goes through all steps necessary on the Slack website and Python.

• Dictionary of routers the netbot can log into. Includes device FQDN and platform so Netmiko can interact with the devices properly.

• imports:
  • Imports os for reading environment variables used for API tokens and network device credentials.
  • Imports logging for getting helpful log messages on errors once the bolt application is running.
  • Imports slack_bolt classes to run the web client that establishes a socket with Slack to receive messages and respond based on the message text.
  • Imports safe_load from yaml to create dicts based on contents of hosts.yml.
  • Imports NetBot class to instantiate it for getting responses to send back to slack.
• Functions/class instances:
  • Create instance of slack_bolt App for establishing connection to Slack.
  • @app.message decorator is used throughout the file to execute the function underneath when the slack message text contains the string passed as a parameter.
  • message_debug executes in response to a Slack message containing the string "netbot debug". It converts the message dict received by the application and converts it into plain text for posting into the Slack chat.
  • message_help executes in response to a Slack message containing the string "netbot help". It instantiates NetBot without passing any instance attributes. NetBot returns the message text that the application will post to Slack.
  • send_device_output executes in response to a Slack message containing the string "netbot get". It calls the function get_command_and_device to get a command string and device dict based on the contents of the Slack message text. It then instantiates NetBot, passing the command and the device as instance variables, so NetBot can send a command to the device indicated and return the output.
  • get_command_and_device takes the Slack message text and separates it into vars command and device_key using device= as a delimiter. If the delimeter is not present, it returns None as the values for command and device. If the delimeter is present, it keeps the command variable and calls get_device_dict with device_key as a parameter to receive the device dict if the string corresponds to a device in the inventory or None if it doesn't. The function will then return the command string and device dict for use in instantiating NetBot.
  • get_device_dict Reads hosts.yml as a list of dicts, adding environment variables NTWK_USERNAME and NTWK_PASSWORD to the dicts within the list for use as login credentials. It then assigns the device dicts in the list as values in another dict with keys corresponding to the values expected to be passed as the device parameter. If a key in devices corresponds to the device parameter, the function returns the device dict corresponding to that key. If an invalid device key was passed (including an empty string or a None type), the function returns None.
  • mock_message_debug, mock_message_help, and mock_send_device_output are functions corresponding to message_debug, message_help, and send_device_output, respectively, for use in unit testing in lieu of testing the decorated functions.

• Imports ConnectHandler from netmiko for logging into network devices, sending commands, and returning the results.
• HELP_TEXT property provides the help text containing the valid syntax for commands and devices, as well as the current devices that can be indicated.
• __init__ instantiates the class with optional command and device parameters for use as instance attributes. Those parameters are not required when NetBot is instantiated to provide the help text.
• send_help_info returns a string containing the class attribute HELP_TEXT so users know what commands NetBot will respond to.
• get_output expects self.command and self.device to be set to valid values. If an invalid device was passed (an empty string or None type), the method returns an error message with helpful text. If a valid device is set, the method evaluates the command passed in the Slack message to choose a command to send to the network device. If no valid command was passed, the method will return an error message with helpful text. If a valid command and device were passed, the method will use ConnectHandler to attempt to connect to the device and get command output. The method will then return the command output, or an error message if an exception is thrown by ConnectHandler.

• Contains functions for use with pytest. It currently tests only the functions without decorators, as the decorator functions require the web server to be running. In lieu of testing the decorator functions, mock functions were created for testing omitting say and instead returning a string.

• Slack application (bot) with appropriate permissions as per Slack Bolt.
• Setting the following environment variables:
  • NTWK_USERNAME="..."
  • NTWK_PASSWORD="..."
  • SLACK_APP_TOKEN="xapp..."
  • SLACK_BOT_TOKEN="xoxb..."
• I am using eve-ng to run virtual routers that receive the commands. You can adapt the program to instead run commands on Linux VMs in your own network or a cloud provider.