2.2 KiB
Plugin Development
This documentation covers the development of custom plugins for NetBox. Plugins are essentially self-contained Django apps which integrate with NetBox to provide custom functionality. Since the development of Django apps is already very well-documented, we'll only be covering the aspects that are specific to NetBox.
Initial Setup
Plugin Structure
Although the specific structure of a plugin is largely left to the discretion of its authors, a typical NetBox plugin might look like this:
plugin_name/
- plugin_name/
- templates/
- *.html
- __init__.py
- middleware.py
- navigation.py
- signals.py
- template_content.py
- urls.py
- views.py
- setup.py
The top level is the project root, which is typically synonymous with the git repository. A file named setup.py must exist at the top level to register the plugin within NetBox and to define meta data. You might also find miscellaneous other files within the project root, such as .gitignore.
The second level directory houses the actual plugin code, arranged in a set of Python files. These are arbitrary, however the plugin must include a __init__.py file which provides an AppConfig subclass.
Create setup.py
The first step is to write our Python setup script, which facilitates the installation of the plugin. This is standard practice for Python applications, with the only really noteworthy bit being the declared entry_points: The plugin must define an entry point for netbox.plugin pointing to the NetBoxPluginMeta class.
from setuptools import setup, find_packages
setup(
name='netbox-animal-sounds',
version='0.1',
description='Show animals and the sounds they make',
url='https://github.com/organization/animal-sounds',
author='Author Name',
author_email='author@example.com',
license='Apache 2.0',
install_requires=[],
packages=find_packages(exclude=['tests', 'tests.*']),
include_package_data=True,
entry_points={
'netbox.plugin': 'netbox_animal_sounds=netbox_animal_sounds:NetBoxPluginMeta'
}
)