Data Backends

Data sources can be defined to reference data which exists on systems of record outside NetBox, such as a git repository or Amazon S3 bucket. Plugins can register their own backend classes to introduce support for additional resource types. This is done by subclassing NetBox's DataBackend class.

data_backends.py

from netbox.data_backends import DataBackend

class MyDataBackend(DataBackend):
    name = 'mybackend'
    label = 'My Backend'
    ...

To register one or more data backends with NetBox, define a list named backends at the end of this file:

data_backends.py

backends = [MyDataBackend]

Tip

The path to the list of search indexes can be modified by setting data_backends in the PluginConfig instance.

`DataBackend`

A data backend represents a specific system of record for data, such as a git repository or Amazon S3 bucket.

Attributes:

Name	Type	Description
`name`		The identifier under which this backend will be registered in NetBox
`label`		The human-friendly name for this backend
`is_local`		A boolean indicating whether this backend accesses local data
`parameters`		A dictionary mapping configuration form field names to their classes
`sensitive_parameters`		An iterable of field names for which the values should not be displayed to the user

`init_config()`

A hook to initialize the instance's configuration. The data returned by this method is assigned to the instance's config attribute upon initialization, which can be referenced by the fetch() method.

`fetch()`

A context manager which performs the following:

Handles all setup and synchronization
Yields the local path at which data has been replicated
Performs any necessary cleanup