Puppet hiera and create_resource issue

Question

I'm having some issues with passing a hash from hiera through to a resource creation.

vhosts:
    project_1:
        name: project_1
        project_name: project_1
    project_2:
        name: project_2
        project_name: project_2

$vhosts = hiera('vhosts', [])
create_resources(project_vhosts::vhosts, $vhosts)

Ignore the hidden project names :) but you get the gist. My resource looks like this:

define project_vhosts::vhosts(
$vhosts = []
){
    notice($vhosts)
}

I get these errors after my puppet run

Error: Invalid parameter project_name on project_vhosts::Vhosts[project_1] on node *
Wrapped exception:
Invalid parameter project_name
Error: Invalid parameter project_name on project_vhosts::Vhosts[project_1] on *

I get that it wants me to implement the parameters directly into the class. However what I really want is the hash available as a whole to me in the resource. What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

First off, please don't use [] to denote an empty hash. It's not. [] is the empty array, and {} is the empty hash.

To do what you want, your data just need one more layer of hashing.

vhost_data:
    vhosts:
        project_1:            
            name: project_1
            project_name: project_1
        project_2:
            name: project_2
            project_name: project_2

Then

$data = hiera('vhost_data', {})
create_resources(project_vhosts::vhosts, $vhosts)

Of course, there is yet a simpler way to do all of that with your data.

project_vhosts::vhosts {
   'meaningless-resource-title':
       vhosts => hiera('vhosts', {})
}