Data

Just like applications need data to vary their behavior and configure their environments, so do Configuration Management tools.

For this reason, I wrote extlookup and hiera years ago for the Puppet community. Despite CCM’s minimal focus, we still need data to vary behavior.

Data can be used for:

Configuring resource names that differ between operating systems (e.g., httpd vs apache2)
Setting different configuration values depending on environment, role, or other dimensions
Deciding whether environments should have something installed (e.g., development vs production)

CCM supports various data sources:

System Facts - Operating system, networking, and disk configuration
Custom Facts - From /etc/choria/ccm/facts.{yaml,json} and ~/.config/choria/ccm/facts.{yaml,json}
Environment - Variables from the shell environment and ./.env files
Hiera Data - Hierarchical data with overrides based on facts

Accessing Data

Expressions like {{ lookup('facts.host.info.platformFamily') }} use the Expr Language.

Available Variables

In templates, you have direct access to:

Variable	Description
`Facts`	System facts (e.g., `Facts.host.info.platformFamily`)
`Data`	Resolved Hiera data (e.g., `Data.package_name`)
`Environ`	Environment variables (e.g., `Environ.HOME`)

Available Functions

Function	Description
`lookup(key, default)`	Lookup data using GJSON Path Syntax. Example: `lookup("facts.host.info.os", "linux")`
`readFile(path)`, `file(path)`	Read a file into a string (files must be in the working directory)
`template(f)`	Parse `f` using templates. If `f` ends in `.templ`, reads the file first, if it ends in `.jet` calls the `jet()` function
`jet(f)`, `jet(f, "[[", "]]")`	Parse `f` using Jet templates with optional custom delimiters. If `f` ends in `.jet`, reads the file first

GJSON Path Examples

The lookup() function uses GJSON path syntax for nested access:

lookup("facts.host.info.platformFamily")     # Simple nested path
lookup("facts.network.interfaces.0.name")    # Array index
lookup("data.packages.#")                    # Array length

CLI Usage

These expressions work on the CLI:

$ ccm ensure package '{{ lookup("data.package_name", "httpd") }}'

This fetches package_name from the data and defaults to httpd if not found.

Facts

CCM includes a built-in fact resolver that gathers system information. To see available facts:

$ ccm facts                              # All facts as JSON
$ ccm facts host                         # Query specific path
$ ccm facts --yaml                       # Output as YAML

Access facts in expressions using {{ Facts.host.info.platformFamily }} or {{ lookup('facts.host.info.platformFamily') }}.

Hiera Data for CLI

Hiera data is resolved using the Choria Hierarchical Data Resolver. By default, data is read from ./.hiera, or you can specify a file with --hiera.

Note

This applies to ccm ensure commands. The ccm apply command uses manifests that contain their own Hiera data.

Hiera Data Sources

Hiera data can be loaded from:

Local file: ./.hiera or path specified with --hiera
Key-Value store: --hiera kv://BUCKET/key (requires --context for NATS)
HTTP(S): --hiera https://example.com/data.yaml (supports Basic Auth via URL credentials)

Merge Strategies

The hierarchy.merge setting controls how overrides are applied:

first (default): Stops at the first matching override
deep: Deep merges all matching overrides in order

Example

Given this file stored in ./.hiera:

hierarchy:
  order:
    - os:{{ lookup('facts.host.info.platformFamily') }}
  merge: first

data:
  package_name: ""

overrides:
  os:debian:
    package_name: apache2

  os:rhel:
    package_name: httpd

Running ccm ensure package '{{ lookup("data.package_name") }}' installs httpd on RHEL-based systems and apache2 on Debian-based systems.

Note

See the Hiera section for details on configuring Hiera data in NATS.

Environment

The shell environment and variables defined in ./.env can be accessed in two ways:

# Direct access
home_dir: "{{ Environ.HOME }}"

# Via lookup (with default value)
my_var: "{{ lookup('environ.MY_VAR', 'default') }}"

The .env file uses standard KEY=value format, one variable per line.