netbox/docs/plugins/development/model-features.md

Model Features

Enabling NetBox Features

Plugin models can leverage certain NetBox features by inheriting from NetBox's BaseModel class. This class extends the plugin model to enable numerous feature, including:

• Custom fields
• Custom links
• Custom validation
• Export templates
• Journaling
• Tags
• Webhooks

This class performs two crucial functions:

1. Apply any fields, methods, or attributes necessary to the operation of these features
2. Register the model with NetBox as utilizing these feature

Simply subclass BaseModel when defining a model in your plugin:

# models.py
from netbox.models import BaseModel

class MyModel(BaseModel):
    foo = models.CharField()
    ...

Enabling Features Individually

If you prefer instead to enable only a subset of these features for a plugin model, NetBox provides a discrete "mix-in" class for each feature. You can subclass each of these individually when defining your model. (You will also need to inherit from Django's built-in Model class.)

# models.py
from django.db.models import models
from netbox.models.features import ExportTemplatesMixin, TagsMixin

class MyModel(ExportTemplatesMixin, TagsMixin, models.Model):
    foo = models.CharField()
    ...

The example above will enable export templates and tags, but no other NetBox features. A complete list of available feature mixins is included below. (Inheriting all the available mixins is essentially the same as subclassing BaseModel.)

Feature Mixins Reference

!!! note

Please note that only the classes which appear in this documentation are currently supported. Although other classes may be present within the `features` module, they are not yet supported for use by plugins.

::: netbox.models.features.CustomLinksMixin

::: netbox.models.features.CustomFieldsMixin

::: netbox.models.features.CustomValidationMixin

::: netbox.models.features.ExportTemplatesMixin

::: netbox.models.features.JournalingMixin

::: netbox.models.features.TagsMixin

::: netbox.models.features.WebhooksMixin