TLDR: This repo will help you to make use of syntax highlighting on Live Network devices. (/RuijieJuniper/Cisco/Arista)
If you have ever used the CLI on network devices, you probably have ended up frustrated trying to make sense of the long lines of configuration. Although nowadays the use of editors like vim/Sublime/Vscode/Atom can provide some really useful syntax highlighting, you still can find yourself struggling to read the config files or outputs while you are on live devices.
Wouldn't be nice to have some live syntax highlight to differentiate each component and quickly find what you are looking for? Something like...
If you are like me, fascinated by the concept of marginal gains, this guide will help you to work more efficiently in the CLI.
The purpose of this repo is to give you an idea of the power of having syntax highlighting while working on live devices. This is not by any means a full-blown syntax highlighting solution but a way to show you how you can take advantage of it and adapt it to your needs.
Note: The default color code has been tested using a Dark terminal Background as you can see in the images above
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Reading show ip bgp summary (Ruijie / Cisco / Arista)
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Reading show interfaces (Cisco / Ruijie / Arista / JunOS)
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Reading ip route (Ruijie / Cisco / Arista)
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Quicker troubleshooting as you can easily identify missconfigurations or issues like interfaces down.
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Color codes can be totally customised to your liking. To see the available HTML color codes go HERE
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Regex can be adapted to your particular Network OS (NOS) and version.
- Python 3.11+ Recommended
- Chromaterm - A big shout out to hSaria for buliding this wonderful tool that even work with interactive applications such as ssh/telnet.
- Clone this repo:
git clone [email protected]:iskerwin/netcli-highlight-Dracula.git - Get inside the project:
cd netcli-highlight-Dracula/ - Install the following package:
pip3.11 install chromaterm - Copy the config file to your home dir:
cp .chromaterm.yml ~/.chromaterm.yml - If you use bash as your shell, issue:
echo 'ssh() { /usr/bin/ssh "$@" | ct; }' >> ~/.bash_profile - If you use zsh as your shell, issue:
echo 'ssh() { /usr/bin/ssh "$@" | ct; }' >> ~/.zshrc - Prefix your command with ct. It's that simple.
ct ssh somewhere,ct telnet somewhereorct screen somewhere
To always highlight a program, set up an alias in your .bash_profile. For
instance, here's one for ssh.
alias ssh="ct ssh"
alias telnet="ct telnet"
alias screen="ct screen"If you want to highlight your entire terminal, have ChromaTerm spawn your shell by
modifying the shell command in your terminal's settings to /usr/local/bin/ct /bin/bash --login.
Replace /bin/bash with your shell of choice.
- To test, open a new window in you terminal, use one of the following examples provided in the test/ folder and pipe it to chromaterm. For example:
cat tests/arista_pref_list.txt | ct - Last, connect to a
Ruijie|Juniper|Arista|Ciscovia ssh and issue ashow interfaces
ChromaTerm reads highlight rules from a YAML configuration file, formatted like so:
rules:
- description: Obligatory "Hello, World"
regex: Hello,?\s+World
color: f#ff0000
- description: Spit some facts (emphasize "NOT" so they get it)
regex: Pineapple does (NOT) belong on pizza
color:
0: bold
1: blink italic underlineThe configuration file can be placed in one of the locations below. The first one found is used.
$HOME/.chromaterm.yml$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/chromaterm/chromaterm.yml($XDG_CONFIG_HOMEdefaults to$HOME/.config)/etc/chromaterm/chromaterm.yml
If no file is found, a default one is created in your home directory.
Check out
rules; it has some topic-specific rules that are not included in the defaults.
Optional. It's purely for your sake.
The RegEx engine used is Python's re, but it can be switched to PCRE2 (see relevant section below).
The color is a hex string prefixed by b for background (e.g. b#123456) and
f for foreground (e.g. f#abcdef).
In addition to the background and foreground, you can also use blink, bold,
invert, italic, strike, and underline. Though, not all terminals support
those styles; you might not see their effects.
Colors can be applied per RegEx group (see the 2nd example rule). Any group in
the RegEx can be referenced, including group 0 (entire match) and
named groups.
When multiple rules match the same text, ChromaTerm highlights the text with all
of the colors of the matching rules. If you want the text to be highlighted only
by the first rule that matches it, use the exclusive flag.
- regex: hello
color: bold
exclusive: trueIn the code above, no other rule will highlight hello, unless it comes first
and has the exclusive flag set.
You can define colors in a palette and reference them by name. For instance:
palette:
# Created from https://coolors.co/9140f5-bd5df6-e879f6
purple-1: '#9140f5'
purple-2: '#bd5df6'
purple-3: '#e879f6'
rules:
- regex: hello
color: f.purple-1
- regex: hi
color: b.purple-3When referencing a palette color, prefix it with b. for background and f. for
foreground.
If the PCRE2 library is present, you can use it instead of Python's re
engine. When present, an option in ct -h becomes available.
While the performance improvement is significant (~2x), the two RegEx engines have a few differences; use this option only if you have a good understanding of their unique features.
The default rules work on both engines.
If you've got any questions or suggestions, please open up an issue (always appreciated).
To use ChromaTerm on Windows, you will need to run it with the
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
Thanks to danielmacuare for creating this fantastic tool netcli-highlight.
Thanks to hSaria for creating this fantastic tool Chromaterm.