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Porting NetBox Plugins to Nautobot

Given an existing NetBox plugin, it will range from straightforward to very complicated to create a port of this plugin that's compatible with Nautobot, though in general it should be easier than developing a comparable plugin entirely from scratch. Of course, it would be impossible to provide a generalized, step-by-step guide that would cover all possibilities, but this document at least documents some known tips and tricks for this purpose.

Updating Python module import paths

The most likely first issue you will encounter will be a module import problem, and in most cases a simple change to the name of imported modules will suffice:

  • circuits.* -> nautobot.circuits.*
  • dcim.* -> nautobot.dcim.*
  • extras.* -> nautobot.extras.*
  • ipam.* -> nautobot.ipam.*
  • netbox.* -> nautobot.core.*
  • tenancy.* -> nautobot.tenancy.*
  • utilities.* -> nautobot.utilities.*
  • virtualization.* -> nautobot.virtualization.*

Regenerating database migrations

In general, your migrations files will not port over easily; you will probably want to delete and re-generate them (nautobot-server makemigrations <plugin-name>) instead.