=================== YAML Idiosyncrasies =================== One of Salt's strengths, the use of existing serialization systems for representing SLS data, can also backfire. `YAML`_ is a general purpose system and there are a number of things that would seem to make sense in an sls file that cause YAML issues. It is wise to be aware of these issues. While reports or running into them are generally rare they can still crop up at unexpected times. .. _`YAML`: http://yaml.org/spec/1.1/ Spaces vs Tabs ============== `YAML uses spaces`_, period. Do not use tabs in your SLS files! If strange errors are coming up in rendering SLS files, make sure to check that no tabs have crept in! In Vim, after enabling search highlighting with: ``:set hlsearch``, you can check with the following key sequence in normal mode(you can hit `ESC` twice to be sure): ``/``, `Ctrl-v`, `Tab`, then hit `Enter`. Also, you can convert tabs to 2 spaces by these commands in Vim: ``:set tabstop=2 expandtab`` and then ``:retab``. .. _`YAML uses spaces`: http://yaml.org/spec/1.1/#id871998 Indentation =========== The suggested syntax for YAML files is to use 2 spaces for indentation, but YAML will follow whatever indentation system that the individual file uses. Indentation of two spaces works very well for SLS files given the fact that the data is uniform and not deeply nested. .. _nested-dict-indentation: Nested Dictionaries ------------------- When :ref:`dicts ` are nested within other data structures (particularly lists), the indentation logic sometimes changes. Examples of where this might happen include ``context`` and ``default`` options from the :doc:`file.managed ` state: .. code-block:: yaml /etc/http/conf/http.conf: file: - managed - source: salt://apache/http.conf - user: root - group: root - mode: 644 - template: jinja - context: custom_var: "override" - defaults: custom_var: "default value" other_var: 123 Notice that while the indentation is two spaces per level, for the values under the ``context`` and ``defaults`` options there is a four-space indent. If only two spaces are used to indent, then those keys will be considered part of the same dictionary that contains the ``context`` key, and so the data will not be loaded correctly. If using a double indent is not desirable, then a deeply-nested dict can be declared with curly braces: .. code-block:: yaml /etc/http/conf/http.conf: file: - managed - source: salt://apache/http.conf - user: root - group: root - mode: 644 - template: jinja - context: { custom_var: "override" } - defaults: { custom_var: "default value", other_var: 123 } Here is a more concrete example of how YAML actually handles these indentations, using the Python interpreter on the command line: .. code-block:: python >>> import yaml >>> yaml.safe_load('''mystate: ... file.managed: ... - context: ... some: var''') {'mystate': {'file.managed': [{'context': {'some': 'var'}}]}} >>> yaml.safe_load('''mystate: ... file.managed: ... - context: ... some: var''') {'mystate': {'file.managed': [{'some': 'var', 'context': None}]}} Note that in the second example, ``some`` is added as another key in the same dictionary, whereas in the first example, it's the start of a new dictionary. That's the distinction. ``context`` is a common example because it is a keyword arg for many functions, and should contain a dictionary. True/False, Yes/No, On/Off ========================== PyYAML will load these values as boolean ``True`` or ``False``. Un-capitalized versions will also be loaded as booleans (``true``, ``false``, ``yes``, ``no``, ``on``, and ``off``). This can be especially problematic when constructing Pillar data. Make sure that your Pillars which need to use the string versions of these values are enclosed in quotes. Integers are Parsed as Integers =============================== NOTE: This has been fixed in salt 0.10.0, as of this release passing an integer that is preceded by a 0 will be correctly parsed When passing :func:`integers ` into an SLS file, they are passed as integers. This means that if a state accepts a string value and an integer is passed, that an integer will be sent. The solution here is to send the integer as a string. This is best explained when setting the mode for a file: .. code-block:: yaml /etc/vimrc: file: - managed - source: salt://edit/vimrc - user: root - group: root - mode: 644 Salt manages this well, since the mode is passed as 644, but if the mode is zero padded as 0644, then it is read by YAML as an integer and evaluated as an octal value, 0644 becomes 420. Therefore, if the file mode is preceded by a 0 then it needs to be passed as a string: .. code-block:: yaml /etc/vimrc: file: - managed - source: salt://edit/vimrc - user: root - group: root - mode: '0644' YAML does not like "Double Short Decs" ====================================== If I can find a way to make YAML accept "Double Short Decs" then I will, since I think that double short decs would be awesome. So what is a "Double Short Dec"? It is when you declare a multiple short decs in one ID. Here is a standard short dec, it works great: .. code-block:: yaml vim: pkg.installed The short dec means that there are no arguments to pass, so it is not required to add any arguments, and it can save space. YAML though, gets upset when declaring multiple short decs, for the record... THIS DOES NOT WORK: .. code-block:: yaml vim: pkg.installed user.present Similarly declaring a short dec in the same ID dec as a standard dec does not work either... ALSO DOES NOT WORK: .. code-block:: yaml fred: user.present ssh_auth.present: - name: AAAAB3NzaC... - user: fred - enc: ssh-dss - require: - user: fred The correct way is to define them like this: .. code-block:: yaml vim: pkg.installed: [] user.present: [] fred: user.present: [] ssh_auth.present: - name: AAAAB3NzaC... - user: fred - enc: ssh-dss - require: - user: fred Alternatively, they can be defined the "old way", or with multiple "full decs": .. code-block:: yaml vim: pkg: - installed user: - present fred: user: - present ssh_auth: - present - name: AAAAB3NzaC... - user: fred - enc: ssh-dss - require: - user: fred YAML support only plain ASCII ============================= According to YAML specification, only ASCII characters can be used. Within double-quotes, special characters may be represented with C-style escape sequences starting with a backslash ( \\ ). Examples: .. code-block:: yaml - micro: "\u00b5" - copyright: "\u00A9" - A: "\x41" - alpha: "\u0251" - Alef: "\u05d0" List of usable `Unicode characters`_ will help you to identify correct numbers. .. _`Unicode characters`: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters Python can also be used to discover the Unicode number for a character: .. code-block:: python repr(u"Text with wrong characters i need to figure out") This shell command can find wrong characters in your SLS files: .. code-block:: bash find . -name '*.sls' -exec grep --color='auto' -P -n '[^\x00-\x7F]' \{} \; Alternatively you can toggle the `yaml_utf8` setting in your master configuration file. This is still an experimental setting but it should manage the right encoding conversion in salt after yaml states compilations. Underscores stripped in Integer Definitions =========================================== If a definition only includes numbers and underscores, it is parsed by YAML as an integer and all underscores are stripped. To ensure the object becomes a string, it should be surrounded by quotes. `More information here`_. .. _`More information here`: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2723321/snakeyaml-how-to-disable-underscore-stripping-when-parsing Here's an example: .. code-block:: python >>> import yaml >>> yaml.safe_load('2013_05_10') 20130510 >>> yaml.safe_load('"2013_05_10"') '2013_05_10' Automatic ``datetime`` conversion ================================= If there is a value in a YAML file formatted ``2014-01-20 14:23:23`` or similar, YAML will automatically convert this to a Python ``datetime`` object. These objects are not msgpack serializable, and so may break core salt functionality. If values such as these are needed in a salt YAML file (specifically a configuration file), they should be formatted with surrounding strings to force YAML to serialize them as strings: .. code-block:: python >>> import yaml >>> yaml.safe_load('2014-01-20 14:23:23') datetime.datetime(2014, 1, 20, 14, 23, 23) >>> yaml.safe_load('"2014-01-20 14:23:23"') '2014-01-20 14:23:23' Additionally, numbers formatted like ``XXXX-XX-XX`` will also be converted (or YAML will attempt to convert them, and error out if it doesn't think the date is a real one). Thus, for example, if a minion were to have an ID of ``4017-16-20`` the minion would not start because YAML would complain that the date was out of range. The workaround is the same, surround the offending string with quotes: .. code-block:: python >>> import yaml >>> yaml.safe_load('4017-16-20') Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/yaml/__init__.py", line 93, in safe_load return load(stream, SafeLoader) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/yaml/__init__.py", line 71, in load return loader.get_single_data() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/yaml/constructor.py", line 39, in get_single_data return self.construct_document(node) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/yaml/constructor.py", line 43, in construct_document data = self.construct_object(node) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/yaml/constructor.py", line 88, in construct_object data = constructor(self, node) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/yaml/constructor.py", line 312, in construct_yaml_timestamp return datetime.date(year, month, day) ValueError: month must be in 1..12 >>> yaml.safe_load('"4017-16-20"') '4017-16-20'