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Python library for Generic Netlink

At Blu Wireless we needed a tool for doing NL80211 interactions in Python test code. We couldn't find any libraries that facilitates this in a way that leverages the strengths of Python, so we wrote something. Most of the original code was specific to Blu Wireless' technology, but the generic stuff was pulled out to create this library.

Netlink and Generic Netlink themselves aren't very complicated, but the attribute system can result in reams of boilerplate code. The aim of this library is to reduce that boilerplate. The key observation is that for some/most/all genl families, given knowledge about which attributes appear in which context and what type their payload should have, attribute sets can be mapped to Python dictionaries. So to use this library you provide a schema expressing that knowledge about attribute semantics in the protocol you're using, and it gives you an ergonomic way to build and parse messages.

The best way to see what this really means is to take a look at nl80211.py, where we define an example schema for NL80211 commands, and examples/nl80211_dump.py, which uses that schema to query NL80211 for information about a given WiFi adapter.

Works on both Python 2 and 3.

Known limitations

  • It would make sense for this library to help you build and parse multi-part Netlink messages, but it doesn't.

  • No HTML documentation. There are docstrings in the code, though. The most interesting bit is nlattr.NlAttrSchema.