Basic Concepts¶

Familiarizing yourself with the following underlying basic concepts will help you get up and running with the SDK.

Important

In the SDK, collection objects are usually plural, while Resource objects are singular.

When the Resource object’s corresponding URI is already plural, we append the name of the collection with _s.

Example:

URI	Collection	Resource
`/mgmt/tm/net/tunnels/`	tm.net.tunnels	tm.net.tunnels.tunnel
`/mgmt/tm/ltm/pool`	tm.ltm.pools	tm.ltm.pools.pool
`/mgmt/tm/ltm/pool/members`	tm.ltm.pool.members_s	tm.ltm.pool.members_s.members

REST URIs¶

You can directly infer REST URIs from the python expressions, and vice versa.

Examples

Expression:     mgmt = ManagementRoot('<ip_address>', '<username>', '<password>')
URI Returned:   https://<ip_address>/mgmt/

Expression:     cm = mgmt.cm('<ip_address>', '<username>', '<password>')
URI Returned:   https://<ip_address>/mgmt/cm

Expression:     tm = mgmt.tm('<ip_address>', '<username>', '<password>')
URI Returned:   https://<ip_address>/mgmt/tm

Expression:     ltm = mgmt.tm.ltm('<ip_address>', '<username>', '<password>')
URI Returned:   https://<ip_address>/mgmt/tm/ltm/

Expression:     pools1 = mgmt.tm.ltm.pools
URI Returned:   https://<ip_address>/mgmt/tm/ltm/pool

Expression:     pool_a = pools1.create(partition="Common", name="foo")
URI Returned:   https://<ip_address>/mgmt/tm/ltm/pool/~Common~foo

REST Endpoints¶

A set of basic REST endpoints can be derived from the object’s URI and kind (listed below).

Organizing Collection

Collection

Resource

Unnamed Resource

Subcollection

Subcollection Resource

Dynamic Attributes¶

The python object’s attribute can be created dynamically based on the JSON returned when querying the REST API.

iControl® REST `kind` Parameters¶

Almost all iControl® REST API entries contain a parameter named kind. This parameter provides information about the object that lets you know what you should expect to follow it. The iControl® REST API uses three types of kind: collectionstate, state, and stats.

Kind	Associated Objects	Methods
`collectionstate`	`OrganizingCollection` `Collection`	`exists()`
`state`	`Resource`	`create()` `update()` `refresh()` `delete()` `load()` `exists()`
`state`	`UnnamedResource`	`update()` `refresh()` `load()` `exists()`
`stats`	`Resource`	`refresh()` `load()` `exists()`

Methods¶

Method	HTTP Command	Action(s)
`create()`	POST	creates a new resource on the device with its own URI
`exec_cmd()`	POST	executes commands on applicable unnamed resources
`update()`	PUT	submits a new configuration to the device resource; sets the Resource attributes to the state reported by the device
`modify()`	PATCH	submits a new configuration to the device resource; sets only the attributes specified in modify method. This is different from update because update will change all the attributes, not only the ones that you specify.
`refresh()`	GET	obtains the state of a device resource; sets the representing Python Resource Object; tracks device state via its attributes
`delete()`	DELETE	removes the resource from the device, sets `self.__dict__` to `{'deleted': True}`
`load()`	GET	obtains the state of an existing resource on the device; sets the Resource attributes to match that state
`exists()`	GET	checks for the existence of an object on the BIG-IP®

Note

Available methods are restricted according to the object’s kind.