Contributing to Nautobot ChatOps¶
Pull requests are welcomed and automatically built and tested against multiple version of Python and multiple version of Nautobot through Github Actions.
The project is packaged with a light development environment based on docker-compose to help with the local development of the project and to run the tests within Github Actions.
The project is following Network to Code software development guidelines and is leveraging:
- Black, Pylint, Bandit and pydocstyle for Python linting and formatting.
- Django unit test to ensure the plugin is working properly.
Quickstart¶
git clone git@github.com:nautobot/nautobot-plugin-chatops.git
cd nautobot-plugin-chatops
cp development/creds.example.env development/creds.env
inv build
inv start
# Nautobot available as http://127.0.0.1:8080 admin / admin
# Mattermost available at http://127.0.0.1:8065 admin / admin
# To allow Mattermost integration run the following after Nautobot starts:
inv bootstrap-mattermost
Adding a new top-level command¶
First, you should be familiar with the design goals and constraints involved in Nautobot (design.md).
Be sure that this is really what you want to do, versus adding a subcommand instead.
We recommend that each command exist as its own submodule under nautobot_chatops/workers/ (or, as a separate package
entirely, such as nautobot_chatops_mycommand/worker.py, using the entrypoint/plugin capability described in design.md)
so as to keep code files to a reasonable size and complexity. This submodule or package should implement a
celery worker function(s). In general this worker function shouldn't need to do much more than call
the handle_subcommands helper function provided:
# nautobot_chatops/workers/mycommand.py
from django_rq import job
from nautobot_chatops.workers import handle_subcommands, subcommand_of
@job("default")
def mycommand(subcommand, **kwargs)
"""Perform mycommand and its subcommands."""
return handle_subcommands("mycommand", subcommand, **kwargs)
By using handle_subcommands, the top-level command worker will automatically recognize the subcommand "help",
as well as any subcommands registered using the @subcommand_of decorator.
You shouldn't need to make any changes to the views or dispatchers modules in this scenario.
For usability, you should use the App Studio app in the Microsoft Teams client to update the bot settings
(Nautobot_ms_teams.zip) to include this new top-level command as a documented command supported by the bot.
You will probably then need to delete the bot deployment from your team and re-deploy it for the new command to appear.
You will also need to log in to api.slack.com and add the new slash-command to your bot's configuration.
Adding a new subcommand¶
First, you should be familiar with the design goals and constraints involved in Nautobot (design.md).
To register a subcommand, write a function whose name matches the subcommand's name (any _ in the function name
will be automatically converted to - for the subcommand name), and decorate it with the @subcommand_of decorator.
This function must take dispatcher (an instance of any Dispatcher subclass) as its first argument; any additional
positional arguments become arguments in the chat app UI. The docstring of this function will become the help text
displayed for this subcommand when a user invokes <command> help, so it should be concise and to the point.
from nautobot_chatops.workers import subcommand_of
# ...
@subcommand_of("mycommand")
def do_something(dispatcher, first_arg, second_arg):
"""Do something with two arguments."""
# ...
With the above code, the command mycommand do_something [first_arg] [second_arg] will now be available.
You shouldn't need to make any changes to the views or dispatchers modules in this scenario.
A subcommand worker function should always return one of the following:
return False¶
This indicates that the function did not do anything meaningful and it so should not be logged in Nautobot's command log. Typically this is only returned when not all required parameters have been provided by the user and so the function needs to prompt the user for additional inputs, for example:
@subcommand_of("nautobot")
def get_rack(dispatcher, site_slug, rack_id):
"""Get information about a specific rack from Nautobot."""
if not site_slug:
site_options = [(site.name, site.slug) for site in Site.objects.all()]
dispatcher.prompt_from_menu("nautobot get-rack", "Select a site", site_options)
return False # command did not run to completion and therefore should not be logged
...
return CommandStatusChoices.STATUS_SUCCEEDED¶
This indicates that the command was successful, and no further details are necessary in the logging.
You could return another status code besides STATUS_SUCCEEDED in this pattern, but in general any other status
code should be accompanied by an explanatory message:
return (CommandStatusChoices.STATUS_FAILED, details_str)¶
This indicates that the command failed for some reason, which is provided for logging purposes.
You could also use other status codes (including STATUS_SUCCEEDED) for any other outcome that also requires
explanation.
The provided details_str will be stored in the Nautobot command log history.
Adding support for a new chat platform (Webhooks)¶
First, you should be familiar with the design goals and constraints involved in Nautobot (design.md).
You'll need to add a new nautobot_chatops.views.<platform> submodule that provides any necessary API endpoints.
You'll also need to add a new nautobot_chatops.dispatchers.<platform> submodule that implements an appropriate
subclass of Dispatcher. This new dispatcher class will need to implement any abstract methods of the base class
and override any other methods where platform-specific behavior is required (which will probably be most of them).
You shouldn't need to make any changes to the workers module in this scenario.
Adding support for a new chat platform (WebSockets)¶
First, you should be familiar with the design goals and constraints involved in Nautobot (design.md).
You'll need to add a new nautobot_chatops.sockets.<platform> submodule that provides the necessary WebSocket connection to the Platform.
You'll also need to add a new nautobot_chatops.dispatchers.<platform> submodule that implements an appropriate
subclass of Dispatcher. This new dispatcher class will need to implement any abstract methods of the base class
and override any other methods where platform-specific behavior is required (which will probably be most of them).
Finally, you will need to add a new nautobot_chatops.management.start_<platform>_socket management command that will start the WebSocket async loop. In 2.0 these will likely be condensed to use a single base command with args to select the platform.
You shouldn't need to make any changes to the workers module in this scenario.
Submitting Pull Requests¶
-
It is recommended to open an issue before starting work on a pull request, and discuss your idea with the Nautobot maintainers before beginning work. This will help prevent wasting time on something that we might not be able to implement. When suggesting a new feature, also make sure it won't conflict with any work that's already in progress.
-
Once you've opened or identified an issue you'd like to work on, ask that it be assigned to you so that others are aware it's being worked on. A maintainer will then mark the issue as "accepted."
-
If you followed the project guidelines, have ample tests, code quality, you will first be acknowledged for your work. So, thank you in advance! After that, the PR will be quickly reviewed to ensure that it makes sense as a contribution to the project, and to gauge the work effort or issues with merging into current. If the effort required by the core team isn’t trivial, it’ll likely still be a few weeks before it gets thoroughly reviewed and merged, thus it won't be uncommon to move it to near term with a
near-termlabel. It will just depend on the current backlog. -
All code submissions should meet the following criteria (CI will enforce these checks):
- Python syntax is valid
- All unit tests pass successfully
- PEP 8 compliance is enforced, with the exception that lines may be greater than 80 characters in length
- At least one changelog fragment has been included in the feature branch
Creating Changelog Fragments¶
All pull requests to next or develop must include a changelog fragment file in the ./changes directory. To create a fragment, use your github issue number and fragment type as the filename. For example, 2362.added. Valid fragment types are added, changed, deprecated, fixed, removed, and security. The change summary is added to the file in plain text. Change summaries should be complete sentences, starting with a capital letter and ending with a period, and be in past tense. Each line of the change fragment will generate a single change entry in the release notes. Use multiple lines in the same file if your change needs to generate multiple release notes in the same category. If the change needs to create multiple entries in separate categories, create multiple files.
Example
Wrong
Right