tmconfpy data formats

Relevant configuration files

There are several relevant configuration files on F5 BIG-IP devices, here is a incomplete list:

• /config/bigip.conf
• /config/bigip_gtm.conf
• /config/bigip_base.conf
• /config/bigip_user.conf
• /config/partitions/*/bigip*.conf

example configuration data

The tmconfpy ansible collection supports multiple formats to represent configuration data, see below.

The example tmconf data (imaginary objects):

import tmconfpy
parsed_tmconf = tmconfpy.Parser(r"""
module path name {
    description "Object description"
    property value
    list { 2 a c b 1 }
    obj {
        a_key value
        b_key value2
    }
},
module path another_name {
    property value
}""")

object format

The configuration file is parsed as one big python dict. Of course a python dict can be serialized to JSON or YAML. JSON is built-in (YAML is not).

>>> parsed_tmconf.dict
{
 'module path name': {'description': '"Object description"',
                      'property': 'value',
                      'list': ['2', 'a', 'c', 'b', '1'],
                      'obj': {'a_key': 'value', 'b_key': 'value2'}},
 'module path another_name': {'property': 'value'}
}

parsed_tmconf.json:

{
  "module path name": {
    "description": "\"Object description\"",
    "property": "value",
    "list": ["2", "a", "c", "b", "1"],
    "obj": { "a_key": "value", "b_key": "value2" }
  },
  "module path another_name": { "property": "value" }
}

tabular format

Tabular format serializes each individual configuration object into a list with three elements; path (str), name (str) and object (dict). Each of the lists is then added to the main list of all objects.

So path, name and object are the columns and each entry in the configuration file will be a row.

>>> parsed_tmconf.tabular
[
    tabularTmconf(path='module path', name='name', object={'description': '"Object description"', 'property': 'value', 'list': ['2', 'a', 'c', 'b', '1'], 'obj': {'a_key': 'value', 'b_key': 'value2'}}),
    tabularTmconf(path='module path', name='another_name', object={'property': 'value'})
 ]

parsed_tmconf.tabular_json:

[
  [
    "module path", "name", {
          "description": "\"Object description\"",
          "property": "value",
          "list": ["2", "a", "c", "b", "1"],
          "obj": { "a_key": "value", "b_key": "value2" }
        }
  ],
  [ "module path", "another_name", { "property": "value" } ]
]

tabular key value format

Like the tabular format the tabular key value format (tabular_kv) formats the configuration data in a list of entries. In contrast to the tabular format, each entry is not a list but a key value dict / object. While this is more inefficient than the tabular format (namedtuples vs. dict, JSON is smaller), in many use-cases it is simpler. For example when using jmespath to query the data (an important use-case for ansible).

>>> parsed_tmconf.tabular_kv
[
  {'path': 'module path', 'name': 'name',
   'object': {
          'description': '"Object description"',
          'property': 'value',
          'list': ['2', 'a', 'c', 'b', '1'],
          'obj': {'a_key': 'value', 'b_key': 'value2'}
    }
  },
  {'path': 'module path', 'name': 'another_name', 'object': {'property': 'value'}}
]

parsed_tmconf.tabular_json_kv:

[
  {
    "path": "module path",
    "name": "name",
    "object": {
      "description": "\"Object description\"",
      "property": "value",
      "list": ["2", "a", "c", "b", "1"],
      "obj": { "a_key": "value", "b_key": "value2" }
    }
  },
  {
    "path": "module path",
    "name": "another_name",
    "object": { "property": "value" }
  }
]