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Python Development Environment#

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Although every developer's environment is different and is subject to a personal preference, we will provide some recommendations for a Python toolchain setup suitable for the development of NDK applications.

Environment components#

The toolchain that can be used to develop Python-based NDK apps consists of the following components:

  1. Python programming language - Python interpreter, toolchain, and standard library. Python2 is not supported.
  2. Python NDK bindings - generated data access classes for gRPC based NDK service.

Project structure#

Here is an example project structure that you can use for the NDK agent development:

.                            # Root of a project
├── app                      # Contains agent core logic
├── yang                     # A directory with agent YANG modules
├── agent.yml                # Agent yml config file
├── main.py                  # Package main that calls agent logic
├── requirements.txt         # Python packages required by the app logic

NDK language bindings#

As explained in the NDK Architecture section, NDK is a gRPC based service. The language bindings have to be generated from the source proto files to use gRPC services in a Python program.

Nokia provides both the proto files for the SR Linux NDK service and also NDK Python language bindings.

With the provided Python bindings, the NDK can be installed with pip

# it is a good practice to use virtual env
sudo python3 -m venv /opt/myApp/venv

# activate the newly created venv
source /opt/myApp/venv/bin/activate

# update pip/setuptools in the venv
pip3 install -U pip setuptools

# install the latest pip package of the NDK
pip install srlinux-ndk # (1)
  1. To install a specific version of the NDK check the NDK install instructions on the NDK github repo.

Once installed, NDK services are imported in a Python project like that:

from ndk import appid_service_pb2 # (1)
  1. The example is provided for appid_service_pb2 service but every service is imported the same way.

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