Data File Cookbook

This is a library Chef cookbook that provides resources to create data files in JSON and YAML format.

The native file resource has the drawback of treating files like text: cookbook code has to take care of serializing data, and unless you take great care to preserve data order, it often thinks that file has changed even though the data inside it is the same (e.g. because dictionary keys are ordered differently). This clutters chef-client output and can lead to unnecessary service restarts.

The json_file and yaml_file resources exported by this cookbook accept data rather than content, and consider changes in parsed data rather than serialize text.

Recipes

• data_file::default – empty. Can be included in the role run list to make the resources available to other cookbooks.
• data_file::safe_yaml – install safe_yaml gem into Chef and requires it. It is strongly recommended to use this is you use YAML serialization/deserialization. Otherwise, it might be possible to prepare a malicious YAML file that would make chef-client execute arbitrary code.

Attributes

None.

Resources

Two resources are exported: json_file and yaml_file. They behave identically, only difference being the serialization format.

Actions

Inherited from file:

• :create (default)
• :create_if_missing
• :delete

Properties

The resources have all the properties of file resource, except contents. Two new properties are defined:

• data – data to be serialized (anything with #to_json method, including node attributes)
• pretty (boolean, default false) – if set to true, JSON file will be pretty-printed. Meaningless for yaml_file

The content method on the resource can be used to access the serialized JSON/YAML string if anybody needs that.

Examples

include_recipe 'data_file::safe_yaml'
yaml_file '/etc/filebeat/prospectors.d/supervisord.yml' do
  data filebeat: {
         prospectors: [{
           paths: ['/var/log/supervisor/*.log'],
           document_type: 'supervisord'
         }]
       }
  owner 'root'
  group 'filebeat'
  mode '0640'
end

json_file '/path/to/config.json' do
  data node['software']['config']
  pretty true
end

Testing and Development

Rubocop, Foodcritic, Test-kitchen with kitchen-docker driver. See test/harness.sh & .kitchen.yml.

Contributing

Just send a PR on GitHub.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Maciej Pasternacki [email protected]

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.