Jinja: It’s More Than Just Config Generation!

If I’m honest, I feel like Jinja gets a bad rap.

Its role is often thought to be only for generating network configurations.
And with model-driven automation being on the rise it can feel like Jinja is a legacy, tainted tool that we should be moving away from.

I’m here to say there’s more to Jinja than that.

Here are a few other ways Jinja is used in the field of network automation:

1. Ansible – Inline Data Manipulation
Filter and loop over only the interfaces you want, right inside the playbook, without extra preprocessing:

- name: Show enabled interfaces
  debug:
    msg: "{{ item.name }} - {{ item.ip }}"
  loop: "{{ interfaces | selectattr('enabled') | list }}"

2. NetBox – Custom Links
Build custom clickable links in the NetBox UI using data from the NetBox data model. These links are built using Jinja:

https://{{ obj.primary_ip.address }}/

3. Nautobot – Export Templates
Generate reports and documentation using Jinja-based templates that reference data from the Nautobot data model:

{% for dev in queryset %}
{{ dev.name }},{{ dev.primary_ip }}
{% endfor %}

These are just a few examples. But Jinja is far more versatile than it gets credit for and I’m in no doubt it’s not going anywhere soon!

Happy automating!