Retrieving command outputs as structured Python data using netmiko and Genie

In the previous recipe (Sending commands using netmiko), we saw how to send a command and retrieve the output of said command as a string.

While the text output might be perfectly suitable for a human to look at, and understand the different parts, computers have a hard time understanding plaintext.

What if, for example, we want to build a script that prints out all the different interfaces that are available on our networking device? With plaintext, this is going to involve a lot of text manipulation. Since turning the output of CLI commands into structured data is a cornerstone of network automation, libraries have been developed to address this exact issue.

One such library is Genie. Genie (together with pyATS) is an open source project originally developed and currently maintained by Cisco. While it has its roots as an internal Cisco library, it supports the devices from other vendors through...