APIC Test Harness¶

Purpose¶

The APIC Test Harness wraps the Fake APIC into an application server so that toolkit applications can run against the test harness with no modification whatsoever.
It can be used to execute toolkit scripts and applications against an APIC snapshot rather than a live APIC. For instance, the sample script acitoolkit/samples/aci-show-endpoints.py could be run against the live APIC, a snapshot file, yesterday’s snapshot file, or even last year’s snapshot file.
It can be used to generate conditions that are very difficult to create in real systems such as communication failures, connection resets, slow responses, and response timeouts.

Usage¶

To generate JSON configuration files, use the snapback application located at acitoolkit/applications/snapback
Run the aciconfigdb.py file
```
python aciconfigdb.py -u <APIC url> -l <login> -p <password> -s --v1 -a
```
- The -s option takes the snapshot of the configuration from the APIC
- The --v1 option takes the snapshot using direct HTTP queries rather than the configuration import and export policies. This is important to be able to simulate HTTP responses.
- The -a option ensures the configuration includes all properties of the class objects
  - It’s very important to give the -a because the Fake APIC depends on the all properities of the class objects
- The JSON files will be located at: acitoolkit/applications/snapback/apic-config-db
- Depending on the APIC, getting all the data may take around 5 - 8 seconds
The APIC test harness is located in the acitoolkit/applications/testharness directory.

Run the apic_test_harness.py file
```
python apic_test_harness.py --directory <snapshot directory>
```
- The --directory option provides the directory where the snapshot files are located. If the snapshot was created in the snapback directory, the command would be issued as follows
```
python apic_test_harness.py --directory ../snapback/apic-config-db/
```
At this point, the APIC test harness is running as an application server. By default, this service runs on the loopback address 127.0.0.1 on port 5000.

Use the APIC test harness
- Leave the APIC test harness running and execute applications against it.
- Here is an example usage taken from the acitoolkit/samples directory showing the usage of the aci-show-endpoints.py.
```
python aci-show-endpoints.py -l admin -p password -u http://127.0.0.1:5000
```
- Most of the show commands found in the acitoolkit/samples directory can be executed against the APIC Test Harness and many applications can be as well.

Full command line options¶

The full list of command line arguments is available through the --help command line argument.

python apic_test_harness.py -h
usage: apic_test_harness.py [-h] [--directory DIRECTORY]
                            [--maxlogfiles MAXLOGFILES]
                            [--debug [{verbose,warnings,critical}]] [--ip IP]
                            [--port PORT]

 ACI APIC Test Harness Tool

 optional arguments:
   -h, --help            show this help message and exit
   --directory DIRECTORY
                         Directory containing the Snapshot files
   --maxlogfiles MAXLOGFILES
                         Maximum number of log files (default is 10)
   --debug [{verbose,warnings,critical}]
                         Enable debug messages.
   --ip IP               IP address to listen on.
   --port PORT           Port number to listen on.

Log files are stored locally within the directory where the APIC Test Harness is run. For the most complete logs, use the --debug verbose command line argument.
If communication is local only, the default IP address of 127.0.0.1 should be used. If communication will be originated from external sources, the IP address of the interface connecting to the outside world should be used.

What APIC Test Harness supports¶

The APIC Test Harness is not a full blown APIC. It can only respond with the information found in the snapshot JSON files. It will accept configuration but the configuration will not change the snapshot JSON files.
The APIC Test Harness sits on top of the Fake APIC and is limited to what the Fake APIC supports.

Known Issues¶

WebSockets and Event Subscriptions are not supported.
Statistics support is limited.
No configuration changes are supported.