textproc/py-textfsm 1.1.3_2 DragonFly

Python module which implements a template based state machine for parsing semi-formatted text. Originally developed to allow programmatic access to information returned from the command line interface (CLI) of networking devices.

The engine takes two inputs - a template file, and text input (such as command responses from the CLI of a device) and returns a list of records that contains the data parsed from the text.

A template file is needed for each uniquely structured text input. Some examples are provided with the code and users are encouraged to develop their own.

By developing a pool of template files, scripts can call TextFSM to parse useful information from a variety of sources. It is also possible to use different templates on the same data in order to create different tables (or views).