NAME
Net::CLI::Interact::Transport::Base - Spawns an Interactive CLI Session
DESCRIPTION
This module provides a generic cross-platform API with the purpose of interacting with a command line interface.
On Windows the IPC::Run module is used and on Unix when IO::Pty is available (it requires a compiler) Net::Telnet, else IPC::Run. In all cases, a program such as openssh is started and methods provided to send and receive data from the interactive session.
You should not use this class directly, but instead inherit from it in specific Transport that will set the application command line name, and marshall any runtime options. The OS platform is detected automatically.
INTERFACE
init
This method must be called before any other, to bootstrap the application wrapper module (IPC::Run or Net::Telnet). However, via Net::CLI::Interact's cmd, match or find_prompt it will be called for you automatically.
Two attributes of the specific loaded Transport are used. First the Application set in app is of course required, plus the options in the Transport's runtime_options are retrieved, if set, and passed as command line arguments to the Application.
connect_ready
Returns True if connect has been called successfully, otherwise returns False.
disconnect
Undefines the application wrapper flushes any output data buffer such that the next call to cmd or macro will cause a new connection to be made. Useful if you intentionally timeout a command and end up with junk in the output buffer.
do_action
When passed a Net::CLI::Interact::Action instance, will execute the contained instruction on the connected CLI. This might be a command to send, or a regular expression to match in the output.
Features of the commands and prompts are supported, such as Continuation matching (and slurping), and sending without an output record separator.
On failing to succeed with a Match, the module will time-out (see timeout, below) and raise an exception.
Output returned after issuing a command is stored within the Match Action's response and response_stash slots by this method, with the latter then marshalled into the correct send Action by the ActionSet.
put( @data )
Items in @data are joined together by an empty string and sent as input to the connected program's interactive session.
pump
Attempts to retrieve pending output from the connected program's interactive session. Returns true if there is new data available in the buffer, else will time-out and raise a Perl exception. See buffer and timeout.
flush
Empties the buffer used for response data returned from the connected CLI, and returns that data as a single text string (possibly with embedded newlines).
timeout( $seconds? )
When do_action is polling for response data matching a regular expression Action, it will eventually time-out and throw an exception if nothing matches and no more data arrives.
The number of seconds to wait is set via this method, which will also return the current value of timeout. The default value is 10 seconds.
irs_re
Returns the Regular Expression reference used to split lines of response from the connected device. In the end, you will only receive data from this module separated by the ors value (by default a newline character). The irs_re is used internally by the module and is:
qr/(?:\015\012|\015|\012)/ # i.e. CRLF or CR or LFors
Line separator character(s) appended to a command sent to the connected CLI. This defaults to a newline on the application's platform.
logger
Slot for storing a reference to the application's Logger object.
is_win32
Returns true if the current platform is Windows. Can be called as either a class or instance method.
app
Location and name of the program used to establish an interactive CLI session. On Unix platforms this will be ssh (openssh), telnet, or cu (serial line). On Windows this must be the plink.exe program.
connect_options
Slot for storing a set of options for the specific loaded Transport, passed by the user of Net::CLI::Interact as a hash ref. Do not access this directly, but instead use runtime_options from the specific Transport class.
wrapper
Slot for storing the application wrapper instance (IPC::Run or Net::Telnet). Do not mess with this unless you know what you are doing.
buffer
After pump returns successfully, the output most recently received is stored in this slot. Do not access this directly, but instead use the flush method.
stash
During long sections of output, this slot allows more efficient detection of matches. Older data is placed here, and only the most recent line of data is stored in the buffer. That's why flush is the only way to ensure you get all the output data in one go.
NOTES
FIXME: On Unix, when the Telnet transport is selected but IP::Pty is unavailable, Net::Telnet can still be used, but currently IPC::Run is used instead.