textFSM Collect values into list using the same Value variable

Question

I'm new to textFSM. Trying to use the same value to find and save multiple instances of a value matches across multiple lines of input text. I have tried a number of different constructs but none provides the desired output.

Input

set=

 1. text1      2. text2         3. text3

 4. text4                       5. text5 
    
 6. text6

Template file:

Value List alm (\S+)

Start

^\s*\d+.\s+${alm} -> Continue.Record

Actual Result: [text1, text4, text6]

Desired Result: [text1, text2, text3, text4, text5, text6]

Any pointers on how to achieve the desired results?

Answer 1

If you know the maximum number of entries per line, then you can add a separate regex for each entry. Note that you should not use Record as that finishes the list and starts a new row in the result table.

Template, adapted from https://github.com/google/textfsm/issues/11#issuecomment-273649451:

Value List alm (\S+)

Start
  ^\s*\d+.\s+${alm} -> Continue
  ^\s*\d+.\s+\S+\s*\d+.\s+${alm} -> Continue
  ^\s*\d+.\s+\S+\s*\d+.\s+\S+\s*\d+.\s+${alm}

Python code:

import textfsm
raw_data = """ 1. text1      2. text2         3. text3
 
 4. text4                       5. text5 
    
 6. text6"""
template = open("templatefile")
re_table = textfsm.TextFSM(template)
template.close()
print(re_table.ParseText(raw_data))

Result:

[[['text1', 'text2', 'text3', 'text4', 'text5', 'text6']]]

Of course this is not very general. There are proposals to build repeated matches per line into TextFSM, but these are not implemented yet. More information: Issue 11, Issue 18, Issue 69.