Template functions

This page describes StackState version 4.1.

The StackState 4.1 version range is End of Life (EOL) and no longer supported. We encourage customers still running the 4.1 version range to upgrade to a more recent release.

Go to the documentation for the latest StackState release.

StackState's templated json incorporates several functions helpful to resolve nodes either by name or identifier that need to be addressed while creating other nodes, for example on a ComponentTemplate you want to attach to your about to be created Component a Domain.

Function: get

The get function finds a node of a certain type by its unique identifier without needing to specify the type of the node.

get <identifier> Type=<type>;Name=<name>

Example: resolve the Production Environment using

get "urn:stackpack:aws:environment:production"

The get function finds a node in a nested way by first finding the identifier and then finding the type and name in the scope of the first resolved node. For example it is possible to resolve the Parameters metrics from the CheckFunction identified by urn:stackpack:aws:check_function:basic by

get "urn:stackpack:aws:check_function:basic" "Type=Parameter;Name=metrics"

Function: getOrCreate

The getOrCreate function tries to resolve a node by first its identifier and then by the fallback create-identifier. If it can't find any it'll create it using the type and name argument and it'll identify the newly created node with the create-identifier value.

getOrCreate <identifier> <create-identifier> Type=<type>;Name=<name>

Example: find the Production Environment by its identifier and by its fallback identifier or otherwise create it

getOrCreate "urn:stackpack:aws:environment:production" "urn:system:auto:stackpack:aws:environment:production" "Type=Environment;Name=Production"

Note that getOrCreate works only with the following (simple) types: Environment, Layer, Domain, ComponentType and RelationType. Note that create-identifier must be a value in the "urn:system:auto" namespace.

We strongly encourage to use get and getOrCreate as resolving nodes by identifier is safer than by name due to the unique constraint enforced in the identifier values.

Function: identifier

The identifier function creates an identifier out of an identifier prefix, a component type and a component name.

identifier "urn:stackpack:common" "ComponentType" element.type.name

Function: concat

The concat function concatenates two values:

concat "Type=ComponentType;Name=" element.type.name