Introduction to Arista PyeAPI

The Python Client for eAPI (pyeapi
) is a Python library that simplifies working with Arista eAPI, removing the need to deal with the specifics of its implementation. It's straightforward to configure and use. In this blog post, we'll look at how to install pyeapi
and go through some examples.
If you're familiar with Arista's eAPI, you know that you can browse to the device's IP in a browser, run commands, and get the output directly. You can also achieve the same result using Python, but it typically requires understanding which libraries to use and how to construct the REST API requests.
However, pyeapi
simplifies all of this. You don't need to worry about what's happening behind the scenes. Below is a screenshot of running show vlan
command via the REST API, and in the following examples, we'll see how to get the same output using pyeapi
.

PyeAPI Installation
To install pyeapi
, you can use pip
, which is the standard package manager for Python. It's a good practice to use a virtual environment (venv
) to keep your dependencies isolated and avoid conflicts with other projects. First, create and activate a virtual environment. Once your virtual Continue reading