In this chapter, we started moving down the path of building REST APIs for our network. We looked at different popular Python web frameworks, namely Django and Flask, and compared and contrasted between the two. By choosing Flask, we are able to start small and expand on features by adding Flask extensions.

In our lab, we used the virtual environment to separate the Flask installation base from our global site-packages. The lab network consist of four nodes, two of which we have designated as spine routers while the other two as leafs. We took a tour of the basics of Flask and used the simple HTTPie client for testing our API setup.

Among the different setups of Flask, we placed special emphasis on URL dispatch as well as the URL variables because they are the initial logic between the requesters and our API system. We took a look at using Flask-SQLAlchemy and sqlite to store and return network elements that are static in nature. For operation tasks, we also created API endpoints while calling other programs, such as Pexpect, to accomplish our tasks. We improved the setup by adding asynchronous handling as well user authentication to our API. Toward the end of the chapter, we look at some of the additional resource links we can follow to add even more security and other features.

In the next chapter, we will shift our gear to take a look at Software-Defined Networking (SDN), starting with the original technology that some considered started the SDN movement: OpenFlow.