The First Application

Whetting Your Appetite

If you want to manage network gear (switches, routers, etc) your own way, you just need to write your own Ryu application. Your application tells Ryu how you want to manage the gear. Then Ryu configures the gear by using OpenFlow protocol, etc.

Writing Ryu applications is easy. They're just Python scripts.

Start Writing

Here we show a Ryu application that makes an OpenFlow switch work as a dumb layer 2 switch.

Open a text editor and create a new file with the following content:

from ryu.base import app_manager

class L2Switch(app_manager.RyuApp):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(L2Switch, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

Ryu applications are just Python scripts so you can save the file with any name, any extension, and any place you want. Let's name the file 'l2.py' in your home directory.

This application does nothing useful yet, however it's a complete Ryu application. In fact, you can run this Ryu application:

% ryu-manager ~/l2.py
loading app /Users/fujita/l2.py
instantiating app /Users/fujita/l2.py

All you have to do is define a new subclass of RyuApp to run your Python script as a Ryu application.

Next let's add some functionality that sends a received packet to all the ports.

from ryu.base import app_manager
from ryu.controller import ofp_event
from ryu.controller.handler import MAIN_DISPATCHER
from ryu.controller.handler import set_ev_cls
from ryu.ofproto import ofproto_v1_0

class L2Switch(app_manager.RyuApp):
    OFP_VERSIONS = [ofproto_v1_0.OFP_VERSION]

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(L2Switch, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

    @set_ev_cls(ofp_event.EventOFPPacketIn, MAIN_DISPATCHER)
    def packet_in_handler(self, ev):
        msg = ev.msg
        dp = msg.datapath
        ofp = dp.ofproto
        ofp_parser = dp.ofproto_parser

        actions = [ofp_parser.OFPActionOutput(ofp.OFPP_FLOOD)]

        data = None
        if msg.buffer_id == ofp.OFP_NO_BUFFER:
             data = msg.data

        out = ofp_parser.OFPPacketOut(
            datapath=dp, buffer_id=msg.buffer_id, in_port=msg.in_port,
            actions=actions, data = data)
        dp.send_msg(out)

A new method 'packet_in_handler' is added to the L2Switch class. This is called when Ryu receives an OpenFlow packet_in message. The trick is the 'set_ev_cls' decorator. This decorator tells Ryu when the decorated function should be called.

The first argument of the decorator indicates which type of event this function should be called for. As you might expect, every time Ryu gets a packet_in message, this function is called.

The second argument indicates the state of the switch. You probably want to ignore packet_in messages before the negotiation between Ryu and the switch is finished. Using 'MAIN_DISPATCHER' as the second argument means this function is called only after the negotiation completes.

Next let's look at the first half of the 'packet_in_handler' function.

  • ev.msg is an object that represents a packet_in data structure.
  • msg.dp is an object that represents a datapath (switch).
  • dp.ofproto and dp.ofproto_parser are objects that represent the OpenFlow protocol that Ryu and the switch negotiated.

Ready for the second half.

  • OFPActionOutput class is used with a packet_out message to specify a switch port that you want to send the packet out of. This application uses the OFPP_FLOOD flag to indicate that the packet should be sent out on all ports.
  • OFPPacketOut class is used to build a packet_out message.
  • If you call Datapath class's send_msg method with a OpenFlow message class object, Ryu builds and sends the on-wire data format to the switch.

There, you finished implementing your first Ryu application. You are ready to run a Ryu application that does something useful.

Is a dumb L2 switch is too dumb? You want to implement a learning L2 switch? Move to the next step. You can learn from the existing Ryu applications at ryu/app directory and integrated tests directory.