Variables

When writing an Opta file, users will often wish to have variables which can be changed/inputted based on different conditions/settings. Opta does support this minimal templating via a series of variables that can be used and inserted in a variety of ways. They are as follows:

Input Variables

Opta supports passing input variables at runtime to be used when generating the underlying terraform specifications. This allows you to make your Opta template file reusable. This is done by first specifying which input variables to accept within the manifest via the optional input_variables field like so:

# opta.yaml
name: staging # name of the environment
org_name: my-org # A unique identifier for your organization
providers:
  aws:
    region: us-east-1
    account_id: XXXX # Your 12 digit AWS account id
input_variables:
  - name: min_nodes
    default: "2"
  - name: max_nodes
modules:
  - type: base
  - type: k8s-cluster
  - type: k8s-base
    min_nodes: "{vars.min_nodes}"
    max_nodes: "{vars.max_nodes}"

Each input_variables must have a name and can optionally have a default value to use if no override is specified. If an entry does not have a default field (like max_nodes in our example), then it will be required to be inputted at runtime.

The values are then passed at runtime using repeatable passes of the --var flag like so:

opta apply -c staging.yaml --var min_nodes=3 --var max_nodes=5

Environment Variables

Opta allows you to use the same service yaml file with multiple environments. Additionally, you can use variables to customize the behavior on a per-environment basis.

# hello.yaml
name: hello
environments:
- name: staging
  path: "staging/opta.yaml"
  variables:
  containers: 1
- name: production
  path: "production/opta.yaml"
  variables:
  containers: 5
modules:
- name: hello
  type: k8s-service
  port:
  http: 80
  image: ghcr.io/run-x/hello-opta/hello-opta:main
  healthcheck_path: "/"
  public_uri: "/hello"
  min_containers: 1
  max_containers: "{variables.containers}"

With this configuration, your service will have 5 max_containers in production but only 1 in staging.

To specify the environment to use use the --env flag:

opta apply -c hello.yaml --env staging

Parent Output Variables

Opta allows you to refer to outputs of the “parent” environment yaml as variables in their subsidiary services. These variables are denoted in the form of {parent.output}. For example, take for instance this http-service yaml which (assuming that the environment has a dns module) sets the public_uri to accept traffic of the domain output of the environment yaml:

name: http-service
environments:
  - name: production
    path: "./production.yaml"
modules:
  - name: app
    type: k8s-service
    image: kennethreitz/httpbin
    healthcheck_path: "/get"
    port:
      http: "80"
    public_uri: "{parent.domain}/hello"

To view the full list of variables available to you, simply run the opta output command on your environment yaml.