Inifile Cookbook

This cookcook manages individual entries in INI style configuration files, such as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file.

The primary (initial) use case which triggered the creation of this cookbook is to allow us to more precisely manipulate entries within Splunk configuration files. Templates have been used for this in the past, but that is known to cause conflicts when both Chef as well as Splunk want to write to these files.

This cookbook was inspired on xml_edit, which provides similar functionality for managing nodes in XML files.

Requirements

RubyGem: inifile (is installed via the ini__file::default recipe)

Chef version 12.5 or higher (required due to the use of new style custom resources)

Attributes

This cookbook does not define attributes, it solely provides a resource to manipulate entries in INI files

Recipes

default.rb

When using the ini_entry provided by this cookbook, you need to ensure this recipe is include on your node's run_list. The default.rb recipe installs the inifile rubygem at compile time.

test.rb

This recipe's purpose is twofold. It primary exists as a recipe to run from test kitchen to run a set of actions against a sample INI file. After this recipe has been run its output is verified using InSpec.

The second use of this recipe is to service as an example on how to use the ini_entry chef resource.

Resources

ini_entry

This cookbook provides a single resource called 'ini_entry'. This resource is defined as:

   resource_name 'ini_entry'
   default_action :create
   
   property :filename, String, name_property: true
   property :stanza, String, required: true
   property :entry, String, required: true
   property :value, String

It supports the following actions:

   :nothing		Do nothing, unless another action is notified by another resource
   :create		Set <entry> in [<stanza>] section to <value> in INI file <filename>
   :create_if_missing   Set <entry> in [<stanza>] section to <value> only if the <entry> currently does not exist
   :delete		Remove [<stanza>] <entry> from the INI file <filename>

You can use the ini_entry resource in your own recipes like:

  ini_entry 'create-me' do
    action   :create
    filename 'test.ini'
    stanza   'test'
    entry    'hello'
    value    'world
  end

The example above would lead to config file test.ini looking like this:

[test]
hello = world

(this assumes splendid isolation, as your config file might also contain other config entries - it will of course leave those alone)

Usage

To use this cookbook:

make sure it is uploaded to your chef server
declare a dependency on this cookbook in one of your own cookbooks
include_recipe 'ini_file::default' in your runlist to install the inifile rubygem
add the required ini_entry resources in your own recipes to manage ini_file entries

LICENSE and AUTHOR:

Author:: Gert Kremer gkremer@schubergphilis.com

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

thoutenbos/ini_file