confgen

ConfGen is a little command utility that will help you to generate some configurations

• Free software: BSD license
• Tested on python 2.7 and 3.2

Introduction

In my company, we didn't have a correct tool to generate configuration for our networking devices, just a piece of crappy VBA code that doesn't really fit our needs. So I started to think about a little tool that can provides us simplicity. So, the main idea is that we often have some inputs data in an Excel file, and we use this file to build our configurations with one template.

Quick steps to useConfGen :

• Collect your data and put it in a csv file, the first line of the file should be your title line with the name of your variables
• Build your template(s), confgen is based on jinja, so if you want to build templates, just RTFD of jinja on http://jinja.pocoo.org/docs/
• Generate your file(s)

Installation

Linux

Install setuptools : https://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools

At the command line

$ easy_install confgen

Or

$ pip install confgen

Windows

• Download python and install python from here
• Install setuptools : https://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools (save as, then double click)
• Add ;C:pythonXX;C:pythonXXscripts where XX is your python version to your environment PATH
• Open a cmd and

easy_install pip
pip install confgen

Usage

You have to call confgen from your command line.

Command-line options

-a	(--append) Appending the ouput to the end of the file if it exists
-d	(--delimiter) Delimiter for your CSV formatted file, default is ;
-h	(--help) Display the help and exit
-i	(--input) Input filename of your CSV
-mo	(--multipleoutput) Generate on file per line, you must specify the name of the column where are the names of files to generate
-so	(--simpleoutput) Output file name, stdout if not specified
-t	(--template) Your template file in text and jinja2 format
-v	(--version) Display the version and exit

Examples

One file per line

Here is a little example in order to understand how it works, your Excel/Calc tab is the following:

name            gender              description                                                                                     beer_test               child
homer           man                             D'oh!                                                                                                   yes                                     yeah
marge           women                   Now it's Marge's time to shine!
bart            boy                             Ay caramba!                                                                                                                                     yes
lisa            girl                    Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything.                                                         yes
maggie          baby                    It's your fault I can't talk!                                                                                           yes

which render in CSV format (with ; for delimiter):

name;gender;description;beer_test;child
homer;man;D'oh!;yes;yeah
marge;women;Now it's Marge's time to shine!;;
bart;boy;Ay caramba!;;yes
lisa;girl;Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything.;;yes
maggie;baby;It's your fault I can't talk!;;yes

Note : the fisrt line must be your title line with the name of your variables (no space in your variables' name)

So now, here is a first template example:

Welcome {{ name }},

You're a {{ gender }}
Your favorite expression is : "{{ description }}"
{%- if beer_test %}
You're allowed to drink beer
{%- else %}
/!\ You're not allowed to drink beer
{%- endif %}

{%- if child %}
Children playground access : ok
{%- endif %}

We would like to generate one file per line, the name of file will be the name column

natjohan~# confgen -i example.csv -t template.txt -mo name
-----------------------------------------

Input file : example.csv
Template file : template.txt
Delimiter : ;

-----------------------------------------

File homer was generated
File marge was generated
File bart was generated
File lisa was generated
File maggie was generated

*** Good job my buddy ! 5 Files were generated ***

So now, you should have 5 files called homer, marge, bart, lisa, maggie

• homer:

  Welcome homer,
  
  You're a man
  Your favorite expression is : "D'oh!"
  You're allowed to drink beer
  Children playground access : ok
  

• marge:

  Welcome marge,
  
  You're a women
  Your favorite expression is : "Now it's Marge's time to shine!"
  /!\ You're not allowed to drink beer
  

• bart:

  Welcome bart,
  
  You're a boy
  Your favorite expression is : "Ay caramba!"
  /!\ You're not allowed to drink beer
  Children playground access : ok
  

• lisa:

  Welcome lisa,
  
  You're a girl
  Your favorite expression is : "Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything."
  /!\ You're not allowed to drink beer
  Children playground access : ok
  

• maggie:

  Welcome maggie,
  
  You're a baby
  Your favorite expression is : "It's your fault I can't talk!"
  /!\ You're not allowed to drink beer
  Children playground access : ok
  

One file

Now a second exemple, we just want to generate one whole file

• template.txt:

  => {{ name }} => {{ description }}
  

natjohan~# confgen -i example.csv -t template.txt -so OneFile
-----------------------------------------

Input file : example.csv
Template file : template.txt
Delimiter : ;

-----------------------------------------

*** File OneFile was generated ***

• OneFile:

  => homer => D'oh!
  => marge => Now it's Marge's time to shine!
  => bart => Ay caramba!
  => lisa => Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything.
  => maggie => It's your fault I can't talk!
  

Features

To do

• Force option open(file,'x')
• allow stdin for template
• allow to choose directory to write files