Getting started with iControl

I feel your pain... We are constantly trying to figure out the best ways to bring the "coding" aspects of iControl to the "network guy" while bringing the "networking" aspects to the "dev guy".

 

 

Ultimately it depends on what language you are comfortable working with. For a network guy, I'm assuming you've done some perl while VS/C development may be something foreign to you (correct me if I'm wrong). If that is the case, then the Quickstart guide for Perl might be your best starting place to get the dev environment setup.

 

 

http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=63&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=59

 

Click here

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the perl toolkit, due to it's dynamic nature, is a bit trickier to debug since it doesn't have development time strong bindings to the methods. You have to package the parameters yourself to each method call and if you rename a hash incorrectly it will not work.

 

 

In my book, the .NET client toolkit is likely the most intuitive (if you are using the iControl Assembly located in the labs). Just plug in the Assembly into your .Net project and in 3 lines of code you can be making iControl calls. That might be the best place for you to start if you already have a .Net/C app that you want to extend.

 

 

The iControl API if you haven't seen it is mapped very closely to the product GUI so hopefully if you have a task you want to accomplish and you know how to do it within the GUI, it should be fairly intuitive as to how to do it with the API.

 

 

I'm actively working on Tech Tips/Tutorials in the iControl space, so any feedback of a specific topic would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

Hope this helps a little... If not, let me know more specifics of how I can point you in the right direction and I'll do my best.

 

 

-Joe