A template is a frequent occurrence and is one of the best ways for Puppet to manage dynamic file content. Evaluating each template requires extra effort from the compiler, but the gain in flexibility is usually worth it. Variables in templates have to be declared using the Puppet variable syntax with full namespace, or by prodding a hash with variable inside templates and classes.
The concept of virtual resources is much less ubiquitous. Virtual resources allow you to flexibly add certain entities to a node's catalog. The collector syntax that is used for this can also be used to override attribute values, which works for non-virtual resources as well.
Once PuppetDB is installed and configured, you can also export resources so that other node manifests can receive their configuration information. This allows you to model distributed systems quite elegantly.
The resource...