The CCNA 200-301 blueprint says it plainly: "Interpret JSON encoded data" (exam topic 6.7). Most candidates prepare for that line by staring at a sample blob the night before. In this lab you do what the exam authors actually had in mind: you read JSON, write JSON, and use it as the data backbone of a working automation tool against live Cisco IOS XE devices. Part of the PingLabz CCNA Automation Labs, on the same five-node CML Free topology, with all output captured from the real lab.
In Lab auto-03 your device list lived inside the script. That works until the second script needs the same list. The fix is the oldest one in software: separate data from code. For network automation, the data format is JSON.
What you will learn
- JSON syntax for the exam: objects, arrays, strings, numbers, booleans, null, and the punctuation rules that trip people up.
- How JSON, XML, and YAML relate, and where you will meet each one (exam topic 6.7 territory).
- How to drive a Netmiko device loop from a
devices.jsoninventory file. - How to emit machine-readable results with
json.dump(), turning a script into a data source for other tools.
