Terraform - Rendering Local Values and Variables to speed up development - terraform

Is there a way to render the values of Local Values and Variables? As an example, I have this file
variable "foo" {
type = string
default = "bar"
}
locals {
my_var = "here is ${var.foo}"
}
# Rendered:
# my_var = "here is bar"
Is there a quick and easy way to do it? I've tried terraform console but it's hard to use it with complicated use-cases, such as templatefile, jsonencode, jsondecode, merge and the list goes on and on.
I need this capability to test functions that I'm not yet familiar with. Doing terraform apply for just checking how my functions are working is something that I'm trying to avoid.

I needed something like https://www.katacoda.com/courses/terraform/playground but for local usage with fast results.
I created this project - https://github.com/unfor19/tfcoding - which brings up a Docker container that watches for changes in the file tfcoding.tf and renders the Local Values automatically upon saving this file.
Demo:

Related

Can you use a templatefile as an output value in terraform without the EOF and EOT artifacts?

I'm building out my infrastructure in terraform and one of the outputs that I would like is the ssh config formatted for the newly created server.
I created a template file:
Host ${serverLabel}
HostName ${hostname}
User ${user}
IdentityFile ${identityFile}
And used it in an output:
output "ssh-config" {
description = "The new server's ssh config"
value = templatefile("${path.module}/ssh-config.tpl", {
serverLabel=aws_instance.minecraft_ec2.tags.Name
hostname= aws_instance.minecraft_ec2.public_ip
user= "ec2-user",
identityFile = "~/.ssh/minecraft_key"
})
}
Which works fine except for one little hiccup. I end up with some heredoc tags in the output:
It's not the end of the world because I can just copy formatted text between the heredocs, but is there a way of using a template file as an output value without getting the tags??
Update
In reply to Mark B's question:
What happens if you run terraform output --raw?
Apparently when I output it with the --raw flag the heredoc tags go away
Which feels weird, but reading the description for the output command I guess makes sense:
-raw - If specified, Terraform will convert the specified output value to a string and print that string directly to the output, without any special formatting. This can be convenient when working with shell scripts, but it only supports string, number, and boolean values. Use -json instead for processing complex data types.
So I guess the heredoc tags are considered "special formatting". Makes sense, thought it was not what I expected.
It appears this is how Terraform now outputs multiline values, similar to how regular values had quotes added to them a few versions ago. To get the values without quotes or heredoc tags wrapping them, use terraform output --raw.

Terraform data dynamically using variables

I was wondering if it's possible to grab different data dynamically based on variables like so
data.terraform_remote_state.vm.outputs.vm_***var.vmname***
Or something similar? i dont have the option to redesign the outputs currently, and this would greatly lower the chance of making failure upon creating new terraform deployments
thanks!
There are Input Variables available in Terraform. These variables allow you to define inputs expected at the time of terraform apply. The values may be entered via an interactive terminal or provided in a .tfvars file.
variable "vmname" {
type = string
description = "The name of the virtual machine."
}
Then you can use them by expansion:
"data.terraform_remote_state.vm.outputs.vm_${var.vmname}"
For additional reference, see https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/values/variables.html

Is there a way to input variable values from outside to terraform main file?

Is there a way I can input variable values from outside to terraform main file. It can be a excel sheet or sql db. Is it possible to do so ?
What you can't currently do is point you cmdline at a db i.e. to replace a tfvars file, but what you can set up in Terraform is to use a number of different key value stores:
consul
https://www.terraform.io/intro/examples/consul.html
aws parameter store (using a resource or data)
https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/d/ssm_parameter.html
There are quite a number of other key/value stores to choose from but there's no zero code solution and you will end up with lots of these statements:
Setup a key in Consul to provide inputs
data "consul_keys" "input" {
key {
name = "size"
path = "tf_test/size"
default = "m1.small"
}
}
There are many ways to do that;
You can use a tfvars file with all your inputs and you can use one file customer, user, environment
You can pass the variables to terraform executable on the command line
You can define environment files prefixed wit TF_VAR_[variable]
You can use https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/d/ssm_parameter.html as suggested above
You can even store variables in DynamoDB or any other database
You can use Consult+Vault as well

How to run a string from an input file as python code?

I am creating something along the likes of a text adventure game. I have a .yaml file that is my input. This file looks something like this
node_type:
action
title:
Do some stuff
info:
This does some stuff and things
script:
'print("hello world")
print(ret_val)
foo.bar(True)
ret_val = (foo.bar() == True)
if (thing):
print(thing)
print(ret_val)
'
My end goal is to have my python program run the script portion of the yaml file exactly as if it had been copy pasted into the main code. (I know there are about ten bazillion security reasons I should not be running user input like this, but I am the only one writing these nodes, and the only one using this program so I'm mostly just ignoring this fact...)
Currently my attempt goes like this: I load my yaml file as a dict using pyyaml
node = yaml.safe_load(file.yaml)
Then I'm trying to use exec to run my code and hitting a lot of problems, I can't run if statements, I simply get a syntax error, and I can't get any sort of return value from my code. I've tried this as a work around:
def main()
ret_val = "test";
thing = exec(node['script'], globals(),locals())
print(ret_val)
which when run with the above .yaml file prints
>> hello world
>> test
>> True
>> test
for some reason not actually modifying any of my main variables even though I fed them to exec.
Is there any way for me to work around these issues or is there an all together better way to be doing this?
One way of doing this would be to parse the code out and save it to a .py file, from which it can be imported dynamically, for example by importlib.
You might want to encapsulate parsed code into a function, which you can then easily call to invoke your action. Also, it would make sense to specify some default imports there.

Puppet: Can $hostname be checked against a master file before running manifest head?

I've seen someone doing a check on whether an agent's MAC address is on a specific regular expression before it runs the specified stuff below. The example is something like this:
if $is_virtual == "true" and $kernel == "Linux" and $macaddress =~ /^02:00:0A/ {
include nmonitor
include rootsh
include checkmk-agent
include backuppcacc
include onecontext
include sysstatpkg
include ensurekvmsudo
include cronntpdate
}
That's just it in that particular manifest file. Similarly another manifest example but via regular expression below:
node /^mi-cloud-(dev|stg|prd)-host/ {
if $is_virtual == 'false' {
include etchosts
include checkmk-agent
include nmonitor
include rootsh
include sysstatpkg
include cronntpdate
include fstab-ds-dev
}
}
I've been asked of whether can that similar concept be applied upon checking the agent's hostname with a master file of hostnames allowed to be run or otherwise.
I am not sure whether it can be done, but the rough idea goes around something like:
file { 'hostmasterfile.ini'
ensure => present,
source => puppet:///test/hostmaster.ini,
content => $hostname
}
$coname = content
#Usually the start / head of the manifest
if $hostname == $coname {
include <a>
include <b>
}
Note: $fqdn is out of the question.
To my knowledge, I have not seen any such sample manifest that matches the request. Whats more, it goes against a standard practice of keeping things easier to manage and not putting all eggs in a basket.
An ex-colleague of mine claims that idea above is about self-provisioning. However that concept is non-existent in Puppet (he posed that question at a workshop a few months back). I am not sure how true is that though.
If that thing above can be done, any suggestion of how can it be done? Or is it best to go back to the standard one manifest per node for easy maintenance?
Thanks very much.
M
Well, you can replace your node blocks with if constructs.
if $hostname == 'host1' {
# manifest for host1 here
}
You can combine this with some sort of inifile (e.g., using the generate) function. If the <a> and <b> for the include statements are then fetched from your ini file as well, you have constructed a crude ENC.
Note that this has security implications - any agent can claim to have any host name. It's even very simple to do:
FACTER_hostname=kerberos01 puppet agent --test
Any node can receive the catalog for kerberos01 this way. (node blocks rely on $certname instead, which cannot be forged.)
I could not decipher your precise intent from your question, but I suspect that you really want an ENC or a Hiera based approach.
Edit after feedback from your first comment:
To make the master read contents from local files, you should
get rid of the file { 'hostmasterfile.ini': } - it only allows you to set contents, not retrieve them
initialize the variable content using the file function (this will make all nodes fail if the file is not readable)
The code could look like this (assuming that there can be multiple host names in the ini file).
$ini_data = file('/etc/puppet/files/test/hostmaster.ini')
Next step would be a regex lookup like this:
if $ini_data =~ /name=$hostname/ {
Unfortunately, this does not work! Puppet will not expand variable values in regular expressions, apparently.
You can use this (kind of silly) workaround:
$ini_lookup = regsubst($ini_data, "name=$hostname", '__FOUND__')
if $ini_lookup =~ /__FOUND__/ {
...
}
Final remark about security: If your team is adamant about not using $certname for this lookup (although it should be easy to map host names to cert names), you should consider adding the host name to your trusted facts.

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