Basic Concepts¶
Familiarizing yourself with the following underlying basic concepts will help you get up and running with the SDK.
Important
When using the SDK, you’ll notice that collection objects are referenced using the plural version of the Resource
objects they contain. When the Resource
object’s type is plural (ends in an s
), you need to add _s
to the name when referring to the collection.
This _s
rule applies to all object collections where the object in the collection already ends in s
.
Examples:
- LTM Pool objects are collected in
f5.bigip.tm.ltmpool.Pools
and are accessible via the pathf5.bigip.pools.get_collection()
. - Network Tunnels objects are stored in
f5.bip.net.tunnels.Tunnels_s
and are accessible viaf5.bigip.net.tunnels_s.get_collection()
.
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).
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() |
stats |
Resource |
refresh() , load() , exists() |
Methods¶
Method | HTTP Command | Action(s) |
---|---|---|
create() |
POST | creates a new resource on the device with its own URI
|
update() |
PUT | submits a new configuration to the device resource; sets the
Resource attributes to the state reported by the device
|
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
.