Automatic module generation from OpenAPI spec?

[glennmatthews]

ISSUE TYPE

• Feature Idea

SUMMARY

When Nautobot adds new data models and new REST API endpoints in support of those models, nautobot-ansible currently must be manually updated to add new modules (#282, #288, etc.). Similarly, when new fields are added to existing models/endpoints, or even just if some fields were missed in the initial implementation, manual updates are also needed (#273, #275, etc.).

Since ultimately these modules are a "wrapper" around the Nautobot REST API, it seems like it should be possible to (at least in large part) automatically generate module definitions based on Nautobot's REST API OpenAPI schema. A relatively small amount of automation in this area could greatly reduce the amount of manual effort needed to update and maintain these modules.

Possible inspiration:

• https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible.content_builder
  • Per Check out ansible-creator ansible-community/ansible.content_builder#84 this is deprecated in favor of https://github.com/ansible/ansible-creator, but see Generate modules from OpenAPI spec ansible/ansible-creator#106

[jvanderaa]

There is one aspect of providing the modules with the capabilities to interact with the REST API. But I find more value in providing the capability to simplify the needed components in the playbook. By providing a single module that handles all of the device information. So you can provide a device with:

device:
  name:
  interfaces:
  ip_addresses:
  primary_ip:
  tags
  manufacturer:
  model:
  location

Then from there if there are multiple API calls needed to make it happen, that it just happens.