mosen/himl

A hierarchical yaml config in Python

himl

A hierarchical config using yaml in Python.

Latest version is: 0.5.6

Description

A python module which allows you to merge hierarchical config files using YAML syntax. It offers deep merge, variable interpolation and secrets retrieval from secrets managers.

It is ideal if you want to structure your hierarchy in such a way that you avoid duplication. You can define a structure for your configuration using a hierarchy such environment/project/cluster/app. It is up to you what layers you want to use in this hierarchy. The tool will read all yaml files starting from the root (where default values would be) all the way to the leaf (where most specific values would be, which will take precedence).

Idea came from puppet's hiera.

Table of Contents

1. Installation
2. Examples
3. Features
   • Interpolation
   • Deep merge
   • Secrets retrieval
   • Merge with Terraform remote state

Installation

Using pip

pip install himl

From Source

git clone https://github.com/adobe/himl
cd himl
sudo python setup.py install

Examples

Using the python module

This will merge simple/default.yaml with simple/production/env.yaml

from himl import ConfigProcessor

config_processor = ConfigProcessor()
path = "examples/simple/production"
filters = () # can choose to output only specific keys
exclude_keys = () # can choose to remove specific keys
output_format = "yaml" # yaml/json


config_processor.process(path=path, filters=filters, exclude_keys=exclude_keys, 
                         output_format=output_format, print_data=True)

The above example will merge simple/default.yaml with simple/production/env.yaml:

$ tree examples/simple
examples/simple
├── default.yaml
└── production
    └── env.yaml

The example also showcases deep merging of lists and maps.

examples/simple/default.yaml

---
env: default
deep:
  key1: v1
  key2: v2
deep_list:
  - item1
  - item2

examples/simple/production/env.yaml

---
env: prod
deep:
  key3: v3
deep_list:
  - item3

Result:

env: prod
deep:
  key1: v1
  key2: v2
  key3: v3
deep_list:
- item1
- item2
- item3

Using the cli

A cli tool called himl is automatically installed via pip. You can use it to parse a tree of yamls and it will either output the combined configuration at standard output or write it to a file.

usage: himl [-h] [--output-file OUTPUT_FILE] [--format OUTPUT_FORMAT]
             [--filter FILTER] [--exclude EXCLUDE]
             [--skip-interpolation-validation]
             [--skip-interpolation-resolving] [--enclosing-key ENCLOSING_KEY]
             [--cwd CWD]
             path

himl examples/complex/env=dev/region=us-east-1/cluster=cluster2

Based on the configuration tree from the examples/complex folder, the output of the above command will be the following:

cluster:
  description: 'This is cluster: cluster2. It is using c3.2xlarge instance type.'
  name: cluster2
  node_type: c3.2xlarge
region:
  location: us-east-1
env: dev

Where the examples folder looks something like this:

$ tree examples/complex
examples/complex
├── default.yaml
├── env=dev
│   ├── env.yaml
│   ├── region=us-east-1
│   │   ├── cluster=cluster1
│   │   │   └── cluster.yaml
│   │   ├── cluster=cluster2
│   │   │   └── cluster.yaml
│   │   └── region.yaml
│   └── region=us-west-2
│       ├── cluster=cluster1
│       │   └── cluster.yaml
│       └── region.yaml
└── env=prod
    ├── env.yaml
    └── region=eu-west-2
        ├── cluster=ireland1
        │   └── cluster.yaml
        └── region.yaml

Features

Interpolation

In order to avoid repetition, we wanted to make it possible to define a value once and reuse it in other parts of the yaml config. Unlike yaml anchors, these interpolations work across multiple files.

Interpolating simple values

data/default.yaml:

allowed_roles:
  - "arn:aws:iam::{{account.id}}:role/myrole"

data/dev/env.yaml:

account:
  id: "123456"

Interpolating whole dict

projects:
  webapp1:
    tagging:
      Owner: "Web Service Team"
      Environment: "dev"
      CostCenter: "123"
  data-store:
      Owner: "Backend Team"
      Environment: "dev"
      CostCenter: "455"

# this will copy the whole projects.webapp1.tagging dict to this key
tagging: "{{projects.webapp1.tagging}}"

# or even a double interpolation
tagging: "{{projects.{{project.name}}.tagging}}"

Deep merge

It's possible to have the same key (eg. a dict/list) in multiple files and combine them using a deep merge. See an example here.

Secrets retrieval

AWS SSM

passphrase: "{{ssm.path(/key/coming/from/aws/secrets/store/manager).aws_profile(myprofile)}}"

AWS S3

my_value: "{{s3.bucket(my-bucket).path(path/to/file.txt).base64encode(true).aws_profile(myprofile)}}"

Vault

Not yet implemented.

Merge with Terraform remote state

### Terraform remote states ###
remote_states:
  - name: cluster_composition
    type: terraform
    aws_profile: "my_aws_profile"
    s3_bucket: "my_terraform_bucket"
    s3_key: "mycluster.tfstate"


endpoint: "{{outputs.cluster_composition.output.value.redis_endpoint}}"