[BUG] Unable to declare routing.community in groups

[jbemmel]

Lab:

---
groups:
  test:
    members: [ x ]
    module: [ routing ]
    routing:
     community:
      c1: '65233:101'
     policy:
      set_pref:
      - match.community: c1
        set.locpref: 120

nodes:
  x:
   routing:
     community:
      c2: '65233:102'
     policy:
      set_pref:
      - match.community: c2
        set.locpref: 130

Result:

user@vm:~/$ netlab create /tmp/community_in_group.yml
[ERRORS]  Errors found in community_in_group.yml
[TYPE]    routing: attribute 'topology.groups.test.routing.community.c1[1]' must be a dictionary, found str
[HINT]    use 'netlab show attributes --module routing' to display valid attributes
[FATAL]   Cannot proceed beyond this point due to errors, exiting

Commenting out the 'groups' part, things work fine at the node level

[ipspace]

Ah, I have to normalize the group data as well. Thank you, will fix.

[ipspace]

I tried to solve this, but hit way too many dependencies:

• The group data is validated before module pre_default is called, so it's impossible to do data normalization in routing.pre_default for group data
• I tried to move the group data validation to a later phase, but it has to be done before the data is copied into nodes, otherwise we get node-level error messages instead of group-level ones
• Without copying group data into nodes, we don't get device and module information into nodes
• Without module information, the pre_default hook crashes or is not executed.

The only sane way out of this would be to document the caveat -- group routing objects cannot use the shortcuts.

Alternatively, I could try another insane solution: add a module "init" hook and move the data normalization there. Also, I would wrap the "init" data processing into try/except blocks and report errors when something crashes to avoid dealing with all sorts of crazy things that could happen due to invalid data types.

So, which one should it be?

[ipspace]

So, which one should it be?

Of course I decided to go for the insane one after one too many coffee breaks 🤦‍♂️ The first PR is already ready for review.