hiser

File Object Serialization Generator

Serializes any given object mapping to a file. For ever scope defined a new file will be generated under a new directory for the scope.

Setup

1. Define the output_object_files map

In the common.yaml file you need to define a new hash called output_object_files. In this hash you should define a set of key/value pairs that tell the script which mapping to output to a file. The value of the pair should should be the name of the file. The extension of the file .json or .yaml will determine which serialization to use when encoding the object.

Example:

output_object_files:
  giant_object_mapping: 'giant_output_mapping.json'

The script will loop through each mapping and generate a output file for each scope.

2. Define the mappping of each object

With the output_object_files map defined above we need to also create a map for each mapping we used in the output_object_files map. This mapping is defined by you. It should represent your data structure. In the example below we map workflows to a alias function which causes hiera to interpolate the key by looking in the hierarchy for the key in order to return the value. and the key

workflows:
  workflow_a:
    url: 'https://www.something.com'


giant_object_mapping:
  workflows: "%{alias('workflows')}"

Where the JSON output becomes

{
  "workflows": {
    "workflow_a": {
      "url": "https://www.something.com"
    }
  }
}

3. Create the scopes

In order for hiera to correctly find the keys in the hierarchy we need to provide a scope for hiera to use. This scope is defined by you and based on your hierarchical structure in hiera.yaml. You should only defined keys in the scope for every variable you use in the hiera.yaml mapping and any other variables you might interpolate in hiera values. This must be a hash with key/value pairs where the values must be strings.

It is mandatory that the mapping name be called env_scopes

env_scopes:
  env_1:
    provisioning_env: prov_env_a
    customer_env: environment_a
    datacenter: datacentera_a

Usage

To generate the serialized files just run the ruby_test.rb file which will generate all the files under the current local directory.