yamlforge

yamlforge is a versatile tool designed to simplify the generation of YAML (or JSON) through the use of pipelines. It enables users to compose configurations dynamically by chaining together reusable building blocks called generators.

Key Features

• Pipeline-based generation: Structure and combine multiple generators in a series to produce the final output.
• Composability: Seamlessly integrate existing tools and enhance them with yamlforge's flexible generators.
• Extensibility: Use yamlforge to fill gaps in your Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) workflows, particularly for Kubernetes, by automating the generation of complex configurations.

How It Works

At its core, yamlforge operates around two main concepts:

• Generators: Components that produce output, typically YAML or JSON, based on inputs or templates. Generators can be anything from simple file readers to more advanced tools like templating engines or shell commands.
• Pipelines: A series of generators composed together, allowing for complex, layered configuration output. Each generator in the pipeline can either build on the previous one or introduce new data.

This approach helps avoid repetitive configurations by enabling dynamic composition and generation of YAML or JSON files based on conditions, templates, and external tools.

Why yamlforge?

yamlforge is designed to solve the problem of repetitive, hard-to-manage configurations, especially in Kubernetes workflows. Many tools lack composability, leading to duplication and rigidity in Infrastructure-as-Code setups. yamlforge addresses this by allowing you to:

• Combine different tools in a meaningful way.
• Use conditional logic and templates to tailor configurations to different environments.
• Supplement missing features from existing tools with yamlforge’s own generators.

Use Cases

yamlforge is ideal for various use cases where configuration complexity can be reduced:

• Kubernetes Configurations: Enhance tools like kustomize and Helm with yamlforge to produce richer, more dynamic Kubernetes configurations. See kustomize.yfg.yaml and helm.yfg.yaml for an example.

• Dynamic Values with Helm: Use yamlforge to generate dynamic values.yaml files for Helm charts. See how templating can help in helm-templated-values.yfg.yaml. For a more advanced use-case, see how to dynamically retrieve values in helm-dynamically-retrieved-values.yfg.yaml.

• Composable Transformers: Build reusable transformers that can be applied to different configurations. Check out reusable-transformer.yfg.yaml for a reusable transformer in action.

• Dynamic Pipelines: Create dynamic pipelines that change based on input. Take a look at dynamic-pipeline.yfg.yaml to see this flexibility in action.

• Integration with CEL (common expression language): Use CEL to extract relevant attributes or filter results. See cel.yfg.yaml and cel-filter.yfg.yaml for an example.

• Integration with jq: jq can be used to extract or transform data from other pipelines: jq.yfg.yaml.

Learn More

Explore the examples in the examples/ directory to see yamlforge in action. Additionally, you can:

• Run yfg explain to explore the available configuration fields in detail.
• Use yfg json-schema to generate the JSON Schema for validating your yamlforge configurations.