JinjaTurtle

JinjaTurtle is a command-line tool to help you generate Jinja2 templates and Ansible inventory from a native configuration file of a piece of software.

How it works

• The config file is examined
• Parameter key names are generated based on the parameter names in the config file. In keeping with Ansible best practices, you pass a prefix for the key names, which should typically match the name of your Ansible role.
• A Jinja2 file is generated from the file with those parameter key names injected as the {{ variable }} names.
• An Ansible inventory YAML file is generated with those key names and the values taken from the original config file as the defaults.

By default, the Jinja2 template and the Ansible inventory are printed to stdout. However, it is possible to output the results to new files.

What sort of config files can it handle?

TOML, YAML, INI, JSON and XML-style config files should be okay. There are always going to be some edge cases in very complex files that are difficult to work with, though, so you may still find that you need to tweak the results.

For XML and YAML files, JinjaTurtle will attempt to generate 'for' loops and lists in the Ansible yaml if the config file looks homogenous enough to support it. However, if it lacks the confidence in this, it will fall back to using scalar-style flattened attributes.

You may need or wish to tidy up the config to suit your needs.

The goal here is really to speed up converting files into Ansible/Jinja2, but not necessarily to make it perfect.

How to install it

Ubuntu/Debian apt repository

sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://mig5.net/static/mig5.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/mig5.gpg
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mig5.gpg] https://apt.mig5.net $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mig5.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install jinjaturtle

From PyPi

pip install jinjaturtle

From this git repository

Clone the repo and then run inside the clone:

poetry install

AppImage

Download the AppImage from the Releases and make it executable, and put it on your $PATH.

How to run it

Say you have a php.ini file and you are in a directory structure like an Ansible role (with subfolders defaults and templates):

jinjaturtle php.ini \
  --role-name php \
  --defaults-output defaults/main.yml \
  --template-output templates/php.ini.j2

Full usage info

usage: jinjaturtle [-h] -r ROLE_NAME [-f {json,ini,toml,yaml,xml}] [-d DEFAULTS_OUTPUT] [-t TEMPLATE_OUTPUT] config

Convert a config file into Ansible inventory and a Jinja2 template.

positional arguments:
  config                Path to the source configuration file (TOML or INI-style).

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -r, --role-name ROLE_NAME
                        Ansible role name, used as variable prefix (e.g. cometbft).
  -f, --format {ini,json,toml,xml}
                        Force config format instead of auto-detecting from filename.
  -d, --defaults-output DEFAULTS_OUTPUT
                        Path to write defaults/main.yml. If omitted, defaults YAML is printed to stdout.
  -t, --template-output TEMPLATE_OUTPUT
                        Path to write the Jinja2 config template. If omitted, template is printed to stdout.

Found a bug, have a suggestion?

You can e-mail me (see the pyproject.toml for details) or contact me on the Fediverse:

https://goto.mig5.net/@mig5