confexplorer

Installation

confexplorer requires the following packages

• Flask
• Requests

Install them using pip install -r requirements.txt

Running

Once the requirements have been installed launch the Flask server:

python explorer.py --help
usage: explorer.py [-h] -u URL -l LOGIN -p PASSWORD [-d DEPTH]

ACI Configuration Visualisers

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -u URL, --url URL     APIC IP address.
  -l LOGIN, --login LOGIN
                        APIC login ID.
  -p PASSWORD, --password PASSWORD
                        APIC login password.
  -d DEPTH, --depth DEPTH
                        Maximum config recursion depth. DEFAULT=2
  --address ADDRESS     Address Flask server listens on. DEFAULT=127.0.0.1
  --port PORT           Port Flask server listens on. DEFAULT=5000

For example:

python explorer.py -u https://apic-1/ -l admin -p apicpassword

After the webserver has started you will need to open the visualisation in your web browser

http://localhost:5000/

How does it work?

confexplorer starts a flask webserver and listens on 127.0.0.1:5000

When a client connects it will pull the entire configuration tree from the APIC specified when launching the script. The configuration is then manipulated to fit the format expected by the d3.js visualisation library. This data is then sent to the browser which uses d3.js to generate a pack diagram.

Demo