Create Specs from your existing Puppet Catalog

Writing tests greatly enhances the quality and stability of your code in general. The same also goes for Puppet code. Puppet has a great tool for writing unit tests for Puppet code rspec-puppet.

But writing unit tests is not always easy. Sometimes it is hard to get visualize what your catalog looks like when a certain combination of facts and properties is passed to your code.

This Gem can help you. It allows you to dump the Puppet catalog as puppet-rspec code.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'puppet-catalog_rspec'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install puppet-catalog_rspec

To use the gem, put the next line in your spec_helper.rb:

require 'puppet-catalog_rspec'

Now we are ready to roll.

There is no one single workflow that works, but this is what we use. In your spec file create the state you want to build the test code for by using the correct facts and params. Then use the next statement in your spec file:

it { dump_catalog }

This will dump the full current catalog as rspec-code. Here is an example:

it { is_expected.to contain_archive('/install/p17572726_1036_Generic.zip')
  .with('path'    => '/install/p17572726_1036_Generic.zip')
  .with('ensure'  => 'present')
  .with('cleanup' => 'false')
  .with('extract' => 'false')
  .with('source'  => 'puppet:///middleware/p17572726_1036_Generic.zip')
  .with('user'    => 'oracle')
  .with('group'   => 'dba')
  .that_requires('File[/opt/oracle/middleware/utils/bsu/cache_dir]')
}

it { is_expected.to contain_exec('patch policy for p17572726_1036_Generic.zip')
  .with('command'   => 'bash -c "{ echo 'grant codeBase \"file:/opt/oracle/middleware/patch_wls1036/patch_jars/-\" {'; echo '      permission java.security.AllPermission;'; echo '};'; } >> /opt/oracle/middleware/wlserver/server/lib/weblogic.policy"')
  .with('unless'    => 'grep 'file:/opt/oracle/middleware/patch_wls1036/patch_jars/-' /opt/oracle/middleware/wlserver/server/lib/weblogic.policy')
  .with('path'      => '/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/java/jdk1.7.0_45/bin')
  .with('user'      => 'oracle')
  .with('group'     => 'dba')
  .with('logoutput' => 'on_failure')
  .that_requires('Bsu_patch[FCX7]')
}

Now copy and paste the parts that you want to check in your manifest into your rspec-code and voila.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/enterprisemodules/puppet-catalog_rspec.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.