Book Image

Extending SaltStack

Book Image

Extending SaltStack

Overview of this book

Salt already ships with a very powerful set of tools, but that doesn't mean that they all suit your needs perfectly. By adding your own modules and enhancing existing ones, you can bring the functionality that you need to increase your productivity. Extending SaltStack follows a tutorial-based approach to explain different types of modules, from fundamentals to complete and full-functioning modules. Starting with the Loader system that drives Salt, this book will guide you through the most common types of modules. First you will learn how to write execution modules. Then you will extend the configuration using the grain, pillar, and SDB modules. Next up will be state modules and then the renderers that can be used with them. This will be followed with returner and output modules, which increase your options to manage return data. After that, there will be modules for external file servers, clouds, beacons, and finally external authentication and wheel modules to manage the master. With this guide in hand, you will be prepared to create, troubleshoot, and manage the most common types of Salt modules and take your infrastructure to new heights!
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Extending SaltStack
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Your first returner


Go ahead and open up salt/returners/local.py. There's not much in here, but what we're interested in is the returner() function. It's very, very small:

def returner(ret):
    '''
    Print the return data to the terminal to verify functionality
    '''
    print(ret)

In fact, all it does is accept return data as ret, and then print it to the console. It doesn't even attempt any sort of pretty printing; it just dumps it as is.

This is in fact the bare minimum that a returner needs: a returner() function that accepts a dictionary, and then does something with it. Let's go ahead and create our own returner, which stores job information locally in JSON format.

'''
Store return data locally in JSON format

This file should be saved as salt/returners/local_json.py
'''
import json
import salt.utils


def returner(ret):
    '''
    Open new file, and save return data to it in JSON format
    '''
    path = '/tmp/salt-{0}-{1}.json'.format(ret['jid'], ret['id'])
    with salt.utils...