Enable the association of inventory items with device components

[jeremystretch]

NetBox version

v3.0.10

Feature type

New functionality

Proposed functionality

Enable users to associate an inventory item with a particular device component installed within the same parent device. This would be done by adding a GenericForeignKey relationship to the InventoryItem model.

Use case

This would allow users to better model the installation of items such as transceivers or antennas, conveying a relationship to a specific component for each.

Database changes

Add a GenericForeignKey field to the InventoryItem and InventoryItemTemplate models, allowing the associating with device components or component templates respectively.

External dependencies

No response

[hiddenman]

That would be really useful and closes most of the cases, thank you.

[hiddenman]

@jeremystretch Btw, what does "a particular device component installed within the same parent device." mean?
What are components in this case? Any class from device_components.py including Interfaces/Ports?

[jeremystretch]

@hiddenman yes, any of the device component models (except device/module bays).

Taking another look at this, I'm not sure what to do about the current nested hierarchy: The recursive parent field on the InventoryItem module allows for self-nesting using MPTT. We could replace this with a GenericForeignKey pointing to any supported component model, but that would 1) introduce a breaking change and 2) remove the ability to efficiently render a hierarchy of inventory items (similar to what you would see from e.g. show chassis hardware on JunOS).

I'll give this some more thought. Interested to see what others think.

[DanSheps]

Why do we want to mess with the parent field? Could we not use a different field to denote what component we use?

[jeremystretch]

We could, but does that make sense? Can an inventory item be a child of both a device component and another inventory item? And if so, would users want to model it as such?

[hiddenman]

Taking another look at this, I'm not sure what to do about the current nested hierarchy: The recursive parent field on the InventoryItem module allows for self-nesting using MPTT. We could replace this with a GenericForeignKey pointing to any supported component model, but that would 1) introduce a breaking change and 2) remove the ability to efficiently render a hierarchy of inventory items (similar to what you would see from e.g. show chassis hardware on JunOS).

@jeremystretch Actually, i've never used Parent/Child for InventoryItem just because didn't understand the logic behind them.

In our case we just can't easily store information about our SFP-modules and their ports, splitter cables and their ports and so on.
Nowadays we have to add lots of stupid custom fields to cover common cases.