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Plugins Development

Plugins Development Tutorial

Just getting started with plugins? Check out our NetBox Plugin Tutorial on GitHub! This in-depth guide will walk you through the process of creating an entire plugin from scratch. It even includes a companion demo plugin repo to ensure you can jump in at any step along the way. This will get you up and running with plugins in no time!

NetBox can be extended to support additional data models and functionality through the use of plugins. A plugin is essentially a self-contained Django app which gets installed alongside NetBox to provide custom functionality. Multiple plugins can be installed in a single NetBox instance, and each plugin can be enabled and configured independently.

Django Development

Django is the Python framework on which NetBox is built. As Django itself is very well-documented, this documentation covers only the aspects of plugin development which are unique to NetBox.

Plugins can do a lot, including:

  • Create Django models to store data in the database
  • Provide their own "pages" (views) in the web user interface
  • Inject template content and navigation links
  • Extend NetBox's REST and GraphQL APIs
  • Add custom request/response middleware

However, keep in mind that each piece of functionality is entirely optional. For example, if your plugin merely adds a piece of middleware or an API endpoint for existing data, there's no need to define any new models.

Warning

While very powerful, the NetBox plugins API is necessarily limited in its scope. The plugins API is discussed here in its entirety: Any part of the NetBox code base not documented here is not part of the supported plugins API, and should not be employed by a plugin. Internal elements of NetBox are subject to change at any time and without warning. Plugin authors are strongly encouraged to develop plugins using only the officially supported components discussed here and those provided by the underlying Django framework to avoid breaking changes in future releases.

Plugin Structure

Although the specific structure of a plugin is largely left to the discretion of its authors, a typical NetBox plugin might look something like this:

project-name/
  - plugin_name/
    - api/
      - __init__.py
      - serializers.py
      - urls.py
      - views.py
    - migrations/
      - __init__.py
      - 0001_initial.py
      - ...
    - templates/
      - plugin_name/
        - *.html
    - __init__.py
    - filtersets.py
    - graphql.py
    - models.py
    - middleware.py
    - navigation.py
    - signals.py
    - tables.py
    - template_content.py
    - urls.py
    - views.py
  - README.md
  - setup.py

The top level is the project root, which can have any name that you like. Immediately within the root should exist several items:

  • setup.py - This is a standard installation script used to install the plugin package within the Python environment.
  • README.md - A brief introduction to your plugin, how to install and configure it, where to find help, and any other pertinent information. It is recommended to write README files using a markup language such as Markdown to enable human-friendly display.
  • The plugin source directory. This must be a valid Python package name, typically comprising only lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores.

The plugin source directory contains all the actual Python code and other resources used by your plugin. Its structure is left to the author's discretion, however it is recommended to follow best practices as outlined in the Django documentation. At a minimum, this directory must contain an __init__.py file containing an instance of NetBox's PluginConfig class, discussed below.

PluginConfig

The PluginConfig class is a NetBox-specific wrapper around Django's built-in AppConfig class. It is used to declare NetBox plugin functionality within a Python package. Each plugin should provide its own subclass, defining its name, metadata, and default and required configuration parameters. An example is below:

from extras.plugins import PluginConfig

class FooBarConfig(PluginConfig):
    name = 'foo_bar'
    verbose_name = 'Foo Bar'
    description = 'An example NetBox plugin'
    version = '0.1'
    author = 'Jeremy Stretch'
    author_email = '[email protected]'
    base_url = 'foo-bar'
    required_settings = []
    default_settings = {
        'baz': True
    }

config = FooBarConfig

NetBox looks for the config variable within a plugin's __init__.py to load its configuration. Typically, this will be set to the PluginConfig subclass, but you may wish to dynamically generate a PluginConfig class based on environment variables or other factors.

PluginConfig Attributes

Name Description
name Raw plugin name; same as the plugin's source directory
verbose_name Human-friendly name for the plugin
version Current release (semantic versioning is encouraged)
description Brief description of the plugin's purpose
author Name of plugin's author
author_email Author's public email address
base_url Base path to use for plugin URLs (optional). If not specified, the project's name will be used.
required_settings A list of any configuration parameters that must be defined by the user
default_settings A dictionary of configuration parameters and their default values
min_version Minimum version of NetBox with which the plugin is compatible
max_version Maximum version of NetBox with which the plugin is compatible
middleware A list of middleware classes to append after NetBox's build-in middleware
queues A list of custom background task queues to create
template_extensions The dotted path to the list of template extension classes (default: template_content.template_extensions)
menu_items The dotted path to the list of menu items provided by the plugin (default: navigation.menu_items)
graphql_schema The dotted path to the plugin's GraphQL schema class, if any (default: graphql.schema)
user_preferences The dotted path to the dictionary mapping of user preferences defined by the plugin (default: preferences.preferences)

All required settings must be configured by the user. If a configuration parameter is listed in both required_settings and default_settings, the default setting will be ignored.

Create setup.py

setup.py is the setup script used to package and install our plugin once it's finished. The primary function of this script is to call the setuptools library's setup() function to create a Python distribution package. We can pass a number of keyword arguments to control the package creation as well as to provide metadata about the plugin. An example setup.py is below:

from setuptools import find_packages, setup

setup(
    name='my-example-plugin',
    version='0.1',
    description='An example NetBox plugin',
    url='https://github.com/jeremystretch/my-example-plugin',
    author='Jeremy Stretch',
    license='Apache 2.0',
    install_requires=[],
    packages=find_packages(),
    include_package_data=True,
    zip_safe=False,
)

Many of these are self-explanatory, but for more information, see the setuptools documentation.

Info

zip_safe=False is required as the current plugin iteration is not zip safe due to upstream python issue issue19699

Create a Virtual Environment

It is strongly recommended to create a Python virtual environment for the development of your plugin, as opposed to using system-wide packages. This will afford you complete control over the installed versions of all dependencies and avoid conflict with system packages. This environment can live wherever you'd like, however it should be excluded from revision control. (A popular convention is to keep all virtual environments in the user's home directory, e.g. ~/.virtualenvs/.)

python3 -m venv ~/.virtualenvs/my_plugin

You can make NetBox available within this environment by creating a path file pointing to its location. This will add NetBox to the Python path upon activation. (Be sure to adjust the command below to specify your actual virtual environment path, Python version, and NetBox installation.)

echo /opt/netbox/netbox > $VENV/lib/python3.8/site-packages/netbox.pth

Development Installation

To ease development, it is recommended to go ahead and install the plugin at this point using setuptools' develop mode. This will create symbolic links within your Python environment to the plugin development directory. Call setup.py from the plugin's root directory with the develop argument (instead of install):

$ python setup.py develop

Configure NetBox

To enable the plugin in NetBox, add it to the PLUGINS parameter in configuration.py:

PLUGINS = [
    'my_plugin',
]