SparkleFormation: Helper Methods

Helper methods

SparkleFormation provides a collection of helper methods for facilitating faster development and cleaner code. Some helpers provide easier access to underlying SparkleFormation functionality, while others provide automatic generation of known template data structures.

Functionality Helpers

Dynamics

Inserting a dynamic directly requires calling out to the singleton method and providing the local context, which looks like this:

SparkleFormation.new(:test) do
  SparkleFormation.insert(:my_dynamic, self, :some => [:value])
end

The helper compacts this call to:

SparkleFormation.new(:test) do
  dynamic!(:my_dynamic, :some => [:value])
end

Registries

Registries are used by calling out the singleton method and providing the local context:

SparkleFormation.new(:test) do
  SparkleFormation::Registry.insert(:my_registry, self, :some => [:value])
end

and can be compacted to:

SparkleFormation.new(:test) do
  registry!(:my_registry, :some => [:value])
end

Nests

Nests are used by calling out to the singleton method and providing the local context:

SparkleFormation.new(:test) do
  SparkleFormation.nest(:my_template, self, :some => [:value])
end

and can be compacted to:

SparkleFormation.new(:test) do
  nest!(:my_template, :some => [:value])
end

Other

Local system call

Use the system! helper method to shell out to the local system, execute a command, and return the string output:

SparkleFormation.new(:test) do
  parameters.creator.default system!('whoami')
end

Output to STDOUT

Use the puts! helper method to print content to the console:

SparkleFormation.new(:test) do
  puts! 'Hi everybody!'
  ...
end

Raise Exceptions

Use the raise! helper method to raise exceptions:

SparkleFormation.new(:test) do
  raise! 'ERROR'
end

Generation Helpers

Provider specific helpers

SparkleFormation includes provider specific helpers based on the provider defined when instantiating the SparkleFormation template instance. For example:

SparkleFormation.new(:my_stack, :provider => :aws) do
  ...
  output.instance_id.value ref!(:my_instance)
end

will make the AWS specific helper functions available within this template instance. If the provider specified Azure, then the Azure specific helper methods would be available:

SparkleFormation.new(:my_stack, :provider => :azure) do
  ...
  outputs.instance_id do
    type 'string'
    value reference_id(:my_instance)
  end
end

To see all the available helpers for specific providers, refer to the library documentation: