Ondatra is a framework for writing and running tests against both real and containerized network devices.
For an introduction to Ondatra, take the Ondatra Tour.
To build and execute Ondatra's unit tests, run the following:
go generate ./...
go build ./...
go test $(go list ./... | grep -v /integration)
The Ondatra binding is the API layer through which Ondatra connects to and
controls the devices in your test environment. For an Ondatra test to run in
your environment, you must provide an implementation of the Binding
interface.
For testing on KNE, Ondatra comes bundled with a binding
implementation for accessing KNE on your local machine. For testing on your
physical devices,
read how to author your own Binding implementation.
To run an Ondatra test, the user must specify the testbed of resources that
the Ondatra test runner should reserve in advance. The testbed is specified in
an external text file in protobuf text format. The protobuf Testbed
message is
defined in proto/testbed.proto, and an example testbed
can be found in
knebind/integration/testbed.textproto.
As the proto definition and example show, testbed consists of the DUTs (devices
under test), ATEs (automated test equipment), the links between them, as well as
properties of the DUTs, ATEs, and links. It is the job of the Reserve
method
in the binding implementation to locate available resources that match the
abstract topology and criteria specified in the testbed file.
Ondatra provides a set of fluent interfaces for configuring and interacting with network devices. The interfaces are divided into several API packages:
- Config provides an API to set native config on devices via vendor-specific (non-gNMI) protocols.
- Console provides an API to interact with the serial console of a device.
- Debug provides an API to add breakpoints to the test to debug its execution.
- Event Listener provides an API to attach listeners that are called at events during the test execution.
- gNMI provides an API for querying telemetry and setting the state of the device via gNMI.
- Netutil provides a collection of network-related helper methods for testing.
- OTG provides an API to generate traffic using Open Traffic Generator.
- Raw provides low-level access to the raw device APIs, to be used when the other higher-level APIs are not sufficient.
- Report provides an API to add properties to, and extract properties from, the JUnit XML test report.
See the full API reference documentation.
An Ondatra test is a Go test, and so is run with go test
, albeit with some
additional flags to control the execution of the test:
-testbed
(required): Path to the testbed text proto file.-wait_time
(optional): Maximum amount of time the test should wait until the testbed is ready. If not specified, the binding chooses the amount of time to wait.-run_time
(optional): Timeout of the test run, excluding the wait time for the testbed to be ready. If not specified, no limit is imposed.-xml
(optional): File path to write JUnit XML test results; disables normal Go test logging.-debug
(optional): Whether the test is run in debug mode.-reserve
(optional): Reservation id or a mapping of device and port IDs to names; allowed only in debug mode
To run a subset of the test cases of an Ondatra test, use the Go test -run
flag. While the -run
flag accepts an arbitrary
Go regexp, to match a single test case it is
usually sufficient to just pass the name of the test function:
$ go test -testbed=testbed.textproto -config=config.yaml -run=$RUN_THIS_TEST_CASE
Read the
Go doc on subtests
for more details on matching subtests with the -run
flag.
To run an Ondatra test in debug mode, pass the -debug
flag to go test
. Debug
mode allows you to insert breakpoints in your code using the
Debug API.
Debug mode also offers a menu option to pause the test immediately after the testbed is reserved. This is useful if you want to manually inspect the testbed before the test cases run, or to run a separate test execution against with the same reservation.
To debug a test against a pre-allocated reservation, set the -reserve
flag to
the reservation ID:
$ go test -testbed=testbed.textproto -config=config.yaml -debug -reserve=123abc
To debug the test against specifically-named devices, set the -reserve
flag to
a comma-separated list of id=name strings at the command line, where ports are
named with the syntax deviceID:portID=portName:
$ go test -testbed=testbed.textproto -config=config.yaml -debug \
-reserve=dut=mydevice,dut:port1=Ethernet1/1,ate=myixia,ate:port2=2/3
Ondatra always sets the Go test -v
flag to true for verbose test output, so
there is no need to set this flag explicitly in your test invocations.
Ondatra uses glog for its own
logging. By default, glog logs to a temporary dir, but setting the
-alsologtostderr
flag will output those logs to stderr. You can increase the
verbosity glog by setting its -v
flag to a positive integer. Increasing the
value of v
produces increasingly verbose and granular details in the logs, as
outlined in this table:
Log Level | Example Information |
---|---|
1 | SetRequest /SubscribeRequest dumps |
2 | Each Update /Delete received in a SubscribeResponse |
3 | Ixia gNMI translation details |
Because go test has its own -v
flag, setting glog's -v
value must be
preceded by -args
to avoid it being interpreted by go test itself. For
example:
go test -alsologtostderr -args -v=1
See the glog package documentation for more information on all the glog flags.
Ondatra has the ability to output test results in JUnit XML format. If you pass
-xml=[path]
to your go test
invocation, Ondatra will use
go-junit-report to translate the
Go test log to an XML file at the provided path. To attach properties to the XML
report and to programmatically parse the XML file use the Ondatra
Report API.
You don't have to code your own binding implementation before getting started with Ondatra, because Ondatra comes packaged with a binding for KNE, and an example Ondatra test that uses that binding. See the knebind README for more on how to use the KNE binding and run the example test.