Integration with Nautobot / NetBox ?

[luckylinux]

Thank you for this excellent Softare 😃.

I'd like to know if there are any Possibilities to integrate NetAlertX with something like Nautobot / NetBox for IP Address Management so that known Devices can automatically be marked as such. Other Fields (e.g. Name, Vendor, Type, Location, Group, ...) could be automatically populated as well 👍.

I'm not currently using Nautobot, but it's on my To-Do List to (hopefully soon) deploy it. I just started using NetAlertX inside an Alpine KVM Virtual Machine running Podman as Root (something which I typically never do but is needed here to access the L2/ARP Network).

Otherwise I would have to write my own Bridge using the API on either Side to e.g. update existing Devices Credentials based on their MAC Address etc.

A quick glance at the Documentation shows that it might be to just to a simple API POST Request using either of:

• https://github.com/jokob-sk/NetAlertX/blob/main/docs/API_DEVICE.md#2-update-device-fields
• https://github.com/jokob-sk/NetAlertX/blob/main/docs/API_DEVICE.md#7-update-a-single-column

Or would I need to use GraphQL ? From past Experiences I found GraphQL to be much more difficult to decipher, probably because I'm not very experienced with it.

[jokob-sk]

Hi,

It should be possible, depending on the intended source of truth.

I would suggest to look into plugins first though - it might be better to implement this as an ingestion plugin from the mentioned tools:

https://jokob-sk.github.io/NetAlertX/PLUGINS_DEV/

The advantage of a plugin approach is that you can see ingested data, the system handles the UI, settings and execution of it. The disadvantage is you currently can't have authoritative plugins that overwrite existing entries. So if a device exists a plugin is not allowed to overwrite existing fields if that field has valid (invalid data would e.g. be (unknown)) data.

Happy to accept a PR for a plugin.

[luckylinux]

Let me see if I understand the Limitations correctly 😃.

A Plugin CAN:

• Create new Entries from Scratch
• Set Data to one or more Fields if the Field(s) is/are basically empty (or invalid as you call it)

But it CANNOT:

• Overwrite Fields that were already manually populated or populated by a previous Plugin's Run

Is this a correct Understanding of their Capabilities and Limitations ?

Nautobot / Netbox are typically used as the "Single Source of Truth" so they are supposed to be Authoritative, at least from my Understanding.

This would mean that if an Item is updated on Nautobot / Netbox (e.g. Hostname is changed), it will NOT be able to be updated in NetAlertX automatically, correct ?

[jokob-sk]

Yes, your understanding is correct, however I do plan to implement authoritative plugin controls in the future.

[jokob-sk]

Should be possible once this is merged: #1435