Python Fundamentals for Network Automation Engineers

Explore various ways to run Python, including the Tony IDE, installing Python via the Microsoft Store and running from the command line, web-based tools, and Python Tutor for code visualization.

Install the beginner-friendly Python integrated development environment from thonny.org for Windows, Mac, or Linux, configure the editor to use tab indentation, and explore the shell, variables, and files views.

Discover Python syntax as a dynamic, interpreted language that infers types automatically, uses indentation to define blocks, and relies on comments starting with the hash symbol to explain code.

Explore Python syntax in Thonny, using the editor, variables, and shell views to write and run code, inspect values, print types, and learn about dynamic typing and variable naming rules.

Explore operators and variables in Python, including addition with numbers, strings, lists, and tuples, and use division, power, integer division, modulo, comparison operators, and boolean operators.

Declare lists in Python, access elements by index, and slice sublists using start, end, and increment; explore negative indexing, reverse lists with a negative increment, and create empty lists.

Learn to treat strings like lists, index from zero, and slice with end-exclusive ranges (fruit[0], fruit[0:2]). Iterate with for loops and use membership operator to check characters in a string.

Declare strings with single, double, and triple quotes, including multi-line strings. Use strip and split lines to manipulate text; beware stripping characters and applying strip to a list can fail.

Learn to use Tony as an integrated development environment to run Python codes, cover operators, variables, strings, length, print, string methods strip and split lines, and for flow control.

Explore boolean variables in Python and how truth values arise from ==, >, <, and logical operators, plus bool() evaluation for numbers, strings, lists, and more.

Master Python conditional logic with if, else if, and else by learning indentation rules, boolean conditions, and or and greater-than operators, illustrated through height-based cases.

Master the for loop to iterate over ranges, lists, and strings, with default start 0 and default increment 1. Practice printing elements and reversing a list.

Use a while loop to execute code until a condition becomes false, incrementing a counter and printing values. Break and continue statements control flow by stopping early or skipping iterations.

Explore boolean variables and operators, the if statement, for and while loops, and apply break and continue to control flow.

Explore list operations and methods in Python, including unpacking, indexing, updating elements, appending, inserting, popping, removing, iterating, copying, extending, and sorting and reversing lists.

Explore tuples in Python: an ordered, indexed, immutable data type. Access and slice elements, unpack values, join tuples with plus, and convert to and from lists, while sorting remains unsupported.

Explore python list comprehension to build new lists from existing data, including unpacking tuples and filtering by color. See practical fruit examples and nested loops creating sublists for numbers.

Explore the characteristics of sets, perform set operations and methods, examine dictionaries and their key-value pairs, and learn essential dictionary methods for network automation engineers.

Learn Python sets, an unordered, unique data type by curly braces; elements cannot be modified, use remove or pop, convert to list, and perform union, intersection, difference, and symmetric difference.

Explore Python dictionaries as key-value data structures, with unique keys, changeable values, not indexed, and common methods like keys, values, items, update, and pop.

Identify the key takeaways on sets, including their characteristics and common operations and methods, and understand dictionaries with key value pairs and dictionary methods.

Explore the role of REST APIs for network automation engineers, covering JSON data, URIs, endpoints, and how clients use HTTP methods to interact with servers.

Discover how JSON represents data in JavaScript object notation, including objects and arrays, and learn to convert between JSON strings and Python objects using json.loads and json.dumps.

Explore netbox as a tool for modeling and documenting modern networks, including devices and IP address management, and learn to use Python's requests library with the Rest API.

Explore NetBox walkthrough: log in, create an account, add a new device type with manufacturer and model details, then generate and save an API token.

Learn to perform REST API calls in Python using the requests library. Install the library in Thonny by going to tools, then manage packages, search for requests, and install it.

Use the requests module to send http requests and inspect the response object, including status codes such as 200, 201, 204, 400, 403, 404, and 500, headers, and text.

Learn to use Python requests to query NetBox with an API token, send a get request for device types, and parse the json response to access results.

Perform post requests to create new records and patch requests to update existing ones, sending JSON payloads with bearer token headers and validating responses.

Learn to call rest api with requests, understand JSON and its dictionary conversion in Python, and retrieve data from a web server using the requests module.

Explore how to use input to collect user data, convert types with int and float, and format outputs with f-strings while performing simple calculations like squaring numbers.

Explore file handling with the Python OS module: getcwd, listdir, chdir, create test.txt, write, append, and read contents.

Learn to process user input and string formatting in Python, and master file handling modes: read, write, and append.