ionit

ionit is a simple and small configuration templating tool. It collects a context and renders Jinja templates in a given directory. The context can be either static JSON or YAML files or dynamic Python files. Python files can also define functions passed through to the rendering.

The context filenames needs to end with .json for JSON, .py for Python, and .yaml for YAML. The context files are read in alphabetical order. If the same key is defined by multiple context files, the file that is read later takes precedence. It is recommended to prefix the files with a number in case the order is relevant.

ionit comes with an early boot one shot service that is executed before the networking service which allows one to generate configurations files for the networking and other services before they are started. In this regard, ionit can act as tiny stepbrother of cloud-init.

Python modules

Python modules can define a collect_context function. This function is called by ionit and the current context is passed as parameter. The current context can be used to derive more context information, but this variable should not be modified. collect_context must return a dictionary (can be empty) or raise an exception, which will be caught by ionit.

Python modules can also define functions which can be called from the Jinja template on rendering. Use the ionit_plugin.function decorator to mark the functions to export.

Note that the functions names should not collide with other keys from the context. If one Python module defines a function and a value in the context with the same name, the value in the context will take precedence.

An example Python module might look like:

import ionit_plugin


@ionit_plugin.function
def double(value):
    return 2 * value


@ionit_plugin.function
def example_function():
    return "Lorem ipsum"


def collect_context(current_context):
    return {"key": "value"}

Prerequisites

• Python >= 3.6
• Python modules:
  • jinja2
  • PyYAML or ruamel.yaml
• pandoc (to generate ionit.1 man page from ionit.1.md)

The test cases have additional requirements:

• black
• flake8
• isort
• pylint

Examples

Static context

This example is taken from one test case and demonstrates how ionit will collect the context from one JSON and one YAML file and renders one template:

user@host:~/ionit$ cat tests/config/static/first.json
{"first": 1}
user@host:~/ionit$ cat tests/config/static/second.yaml
second: 2
user@host:~/ionit$ cat tests/template/static/counting.jinja
Counting:
* {{ first }}
* {{ second }}
* 3
user@host:~/ionit$ ./ionit -c tests/config/static -t tests/template/static
2018-08-08 17:39:06,956 ionit INFO: Reading configuration file 'tests/config/static/first.json'...
2018-08-08 17:39:06,956 ionit INFO: Reading configuration file 'tests/config/static/second.yaml'...
2018-08-08 17:39:06,960 ionit INFO: Rendered 'tests/template/static/counting.jinja' to 'tests/template/static/counting'.
user@host:~/ionit$ cat tests/template/static/counting
Counting:
* 1
* 2
* 3

Python functions

This example is taken from one test case and demonstrates how Python functions can be defined to be used when rendering:

user@host:~/ionit$ cat tests/config/function/function.py
import ionit_plugin


@ionit_plugin.function
def answer_to_all_questions():
    return 42
user@host:~/ionit$ cat tests/template/function/Document.jinja
The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is {{ answer_to_all_questions() }}.
user@host:~/ionit$ ./ionit -c tests/config/function -t tests/template/function
2018-08-13 11:58:16,905 ionit INFO: Loading Python module 'function' from 'tests/config/function/function.py'...
2018-08-13 11:58:16,909 ionit INFO: Rendered 'tests/template/function/Document.jinja' to 'tests/template/function/Document'.
user@host:~/ionit$ cat tests/template/function/Document
The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is 42.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. The source code has 100% test coverage, which should be preserved. So please provide a test case for each bugfix and one or more test cases for each new feature. Please follow How to Write a Git Commit Message for writing good commit messages.

Creating releases

This project uses semantic versioning. To create a release, increase the version in setup.py and document the noteworthy changes in NEWS.md. Then commit the changes and tag the release:

git commit -sm "Release ionit $(./setup.py --version)" NEWS.md setup.py
git tag v$(./setup.py --version)

The xz-compressed release tarball can be generated by running:

name="ionit-$(./setup.py --version)"
git archive --prefix="$name/" HEAD | xz -c9 > "../$name.tar.xz"
gpg --output "../$name.tar.xz.asc" --armor --detach-sign "../$name.tar.xz"

The package for PyPI can be built and uploaded by running:

pyproject-build --no-isolation
twine upload --repository pypi dist/*