RESTCONF Access Agent
download ndCONF Eval Agent Development Package
A complete Web / RESTCONF Agent is constructed by assembling the NuDesign’s RESTCONF Access Agent component together with the YANG Datastore Server, extended using NuDesign’s ndCONF Builder product, and instrumenting a set of YANG modules pre-selected during the code generation process.
NuDesign’s RESTCONF Access Agent provides a standard mechanism for WEB applications to access the configuration data, operational data, data-model specific Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol operations, and notification events implemented in networking devices via NETCONF specified YANG Datastore.
The RESTCONF Access Agent implements IETF RESTCONF protocol and is regularly updated, along with progress of rfc draft-ietf-netconf-restconf standard proposal. The RESTCONF protocol uses HTTP entities for messages between the agent and web application. A single HTTP message maps into a single protocol method, performing a single task on a single resource, such as retrieving or editing a device’s based resource.
A REST-like API is provided. The configuration and state data are exposed as resources and can be retrieved using HTTP’s GET method. The configuration data can be edited using HTTP’s DELETE, PATCH, POST and PUT methods.
Data-model specific operations defined with the YANG “rpc” statement can be invoked using the POST method. Finally, data-model specific notification events are optionally presented as RESTCONF specific resource, if defined with the YANG “notification” statement in any of the device supported YANG modules. The notifications can then be retrieved via the GET method at container RESTCONF / streams.
Data is encoded in either XML or JSON notation.
Summarizing, the RESTCONF Access Agent together with the YANG Datastore Server enable remote Web Applications to access the Agent’s YANG Datastore using a standardized, REST-like API. The developers can add their code locally and create custom, product specific dynamic web pages, using any environment language or server side scripting supported by the Web Server (such as PHP, etc.).
The developer can also embed a client side JavaScript including AJAX (xmlHTTPReq) objects in their web pages providing for client side generated “update requests” to the RESTCONF Agent.