Ansible allows devs
to write programs (in any language) that will return JSON describing the dynamic “snapshot” of current hosts. I’m using vSphere, which is currently not supported by Ansible OSS, and so I need to write such a "custom inventory plugin".
I can handle the querying of vSphere for a list of hosts, as well as constructing the JSON that is compatible with what Ansible is expecting.
Where the documentation completely (seemingly) falls flat is:
How do I “connect” Ansible with my inventory app? That is, say my inventory app is a simple bash script (inventory.sh)..how do I configure Ansible to call bash inventory.sh and obtain JSON from it? In reality the app will likely be a Java executable (inventory.jar) but I figure that if I can figure out how to get it working with bash, I can extrapolate to Java; and
How does Ansible actually capture/fetch the JSON back from the app? STDOUT? Is this all supposed to happen over an HTTP connection? Examples? How does inventory.sh or inventory.jar communicate that JSON back to Ansible?
The inventory script has to be located on the same machine where Ansible runs. It is not communicating through http, Ansible will simply parse the STDOUT of your program. The location does not matter at all, you have to pass the path to Ansible when you call Ansible:
ansible-playbook ... -i /path/to/your/inventory.sh
To avoid passing the inventory location every time you could add this to you ansible.cfg:
inventory = /path/to/your/inventory.sh
You could also copy the script to /etc/ansible/hosts, which is the default location Ansible will look for inventory files/scripts, but I prefer to keep things together so I suggest to place it close to your playbooks/roles etc.
And (3) Is any of this documented, anywhere? Don't see anything in the Ansible docs...
It is not mentioned on the page Developing Dynamic Inventory Sources but it is to be seen on some examples on the page Dynamic Inventory. The docs are community managed and from times litte unstructured and lacking important information.
BTW, there is a VMware inventory script included. By looking at the source I have seen it imports some vSphere stuff. I have little experience with VMware so I can't judge if this is actually what you need and don't need to write your own.
This is completely user defined. Typically you would write your dynamic inventory in Python and use a json dump of the output to create the inventory.
Here is an example for the use case you mentioned (vSphere): https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/ansible-vmware/blob/master/query.py
In a nutshell you create it like a normal Python file and create the options (as he does in main) and selectively execute functions based on which options are passed. These will make REST calls and return the output in the form of a JSON dump, which Ansible can parse for use in inventory.
Related
I have a JSON file that is used in a monitoring software for monitor an specific device.
I want to monitor a similar device which I don't have the JSON file.
I know everything from the new device that is needed to "fill the blanks" in the existent JSON structure.
A brute force approach would be create a script that reads the data (of new device) from a craft input file and output the nodes and leafs in the same JSON structure.
Before I take this path I would like to know if there is some tool that could help me in this task. For sure this "wheel" is not new, I don't want to re-invent it again.
Anyone knows about a tool that uses a JSON as template and generate another one changing the values from other source ?
I am on linux, can write scripts in bash and python.
I have an SFTP trigger in a logic app which fires when a file is added to a certain file area. It is a CSV-formatted file and I want the rows to be parsed and coverted into json. Which is the best way to convert CSV-data into json without using any custom connectors?
I cannot find any built-in connectors doing this job. And as far as I know there are no logic apps functions doing the job either.
Right now, there is no connector/action in logic app that can provide the out of box solution for your requirement. You need to loop in through the array and perform the calculation as per your requirement but I will not suggest you leverage the loop, variables action as it may take time and cost you more.
The alternative would be leveraging the inline code (JavaScript code) to do the calculation as per your requirement. Please note that you will need Integration Account to run your inline code.
Please refer to javascript code and modified if needed according to your needs. I have used '_' for differentiating the nested objects. For more details you can refer to previous discussion here.
For complex calculation you can offload this functionality to azure function and write your code as per the supported languages and call azure function from logic app.
1.Created logic app as shown below:
2 .Created container in storage account and uploaded a CSV file in container.
3.Next using compose action to split the contents of the CSV file on every new line into an array.
a. Here is the expression used in SplitLines compose action:
split(body('Get_blob_content_(V2)'),decodeUriComponent('%0D%0A'))
b. Follow the below MS Doc to write expressions:
4. Removing last(empty) line from previous output using another compose action as shown below ,
take(outputs('SplitLines'),add(length(outputs('SplitLines')),-1))
5.Separating filed names using compose action
split(first(outputs('SplitLines')), ',')
Forming json as shown below using Select action,
**From**: **`skip(outputs('RemoveLastLine'), 1)`**
**Map:**
**`outputs('SplitFieldName')[0]`** **`split(item(), ',')?[0]`**
**`outputs('SplitFieldName')[1]`** **`split(item(), ',')?[1]`**
Tested logic app and it is running successfully. 
Content of CSV file is as shown below:
Csv data is formatted as json:
Reference:Use data operations in Power Automate (contains video) — Power Automate | Microsoft Docs
Credit: #Iason Koulas
I am trying to execute a Ansible one liner, which call a bash script from a remote server and then executes in local machine. The bash script actually fetch data from Database.
Is it possible for Ansible to give a Table formatted output?
I am just pasting the column headers alone.
Thanks
Aravind
author_name scheduled_start_time scheduled_end_time comment_data name
If you want to parse ansible output, there are only two ways, which both are hard and somewhat hacky. One is to use callback plugins, the other is to parse with sed/awk/perl/python/whatever you like. See Ansible output formatting options for reference.
I think there is a cleaner solution: you can execute your script on remote machine, save its output in a file on the remote machine and then save it locally by using fetch module. After that you can process resulting files locally using local action.
I am new to JSON and online databases. I have learned the basics of using .js files and manipulation on them. But I have no clue how to save them onto GAE or Firebase databases.
1)My question is, are every online databases uses JSON differently when they store them?
I have no idea what it looks like storing onto an online database so
2)Can you give me an example of JSON stored in Firebase or GAE. Links to tutorials are also helpful.
Firebase is a true "online database" in a sense that you can save/retrieve/query data to it, without actually writing any code on the server. As such, it is close to Backend as a Service offerings, such as Parse, Kinvey, etc.. Search the web to find more services and compare features that you need.
OTOH, GAE is an application platform - you will need to write server-side code to create any functionality.
As for examples: please RTFM.
GAE's ndb datastore API has a JsonProperty:
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/python/ndb/properties
It's easy to store a JSON object as a StringProperty, using json.loads, json.dumps to parse. For a simple list, you can use a StringProperty, and giving it the repeated=True tag:
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/python/ndb/properties#repeated
It would be really nice to be able to view the output with colorized keys and values.
Check out this shell extension I made called Mongo-Hacker that has various enhancements:
Mongo Hacker Website
Code (GitHub)