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This article is to support customers of Runner, a product that enables teams, developers, and engineers to quickly provision, interact, and modify their environments anywhere - CenturyLink Cloud, third-party cloud providers, and on-premises.
Catalog & Product Overview
A Runner product allows for a user to build a form around their Ansible playbooks to allow for dynamic user inputs at runtime. A Runner catalog is a git repository that contains a collection of products.
- Create a Runner Catalog
- Update a Runner Catalog
- Refresh a Runner Catalog
- Create a Runner Product
- Create Product config.yml
Create a Runner Catalog
A Runner Catalog is a github repository that contains one or more Runner proudcts. To create a Catalog, click the Help & Settings drop-down and select Settings.
On the left side, select Catalogs and this will bring up a view showing you all of your existing catalogs. Click on the add button and a form will appear where you can enter the required information.
- (1): Enter the name that you want to use to label this catalog.
- (2): Enter a description for this catalog
- (3): Enter the HTTPS git URL for the repo you are wanting to add as a catalog
- (4): Enter the branch you want this catalog to read from. (This needs to be compliant with github's API, so for branch "master" it is "heads/master")
- (5): Enter your github username. (This is only required if it is a private repository)
- (6): Enter your github password. (This is only required if it is a private repository)
Click the submit button and your catalog will be added. If you already have products configured in your repo they will start to show up in the private products section after several minutes.
Update a Runner Catalog
To update a Runner Catalog, go back to the Catlogs screen and hover over the catalog you want to update. Click the gear icon and it will open the edit form where you can edit any necessary details.
Refresh a Runner Catalog
Runner catalogs will refresh themselves every 5 minutes and scan your repository for new product directories. In the event that you need an immediate refresh or are not seeing your updates there is a manual refresh button that can be used. If you go to your catalogs, hover over the relevant catalog and hit the refresh button. This will trigger a forced reload of your catalog.
Create a Runner Product
In order to have a product be recognized by Runner, it must first be present in its own folder in an existing catalog. Inside the folder, there must be a minimum of three files; your main playbook yaml file, a README.md file, and a product.yml file.
In the below image, you can see the public Runner Library repository. Through the Runner interface, this repository is configured as a catalog and each folder that you see is a separate product within Runner.
README.md
As part of configuring a new product, your product folder must have a README.md file. This file should provide details about how your product works and the various options that are provided. The contents of this file are then rendered into the Runner UI when your product is loaded.
config.yml
The config.yml file tells Runner all the necessary details about your product and is also where you configure your product form. Below are the required fields that you must put in your config.yml in order to have your Runner product page render properly.
Required Elements:
| parameter | comments |
|---|---|
| name | Name of your Product |
| shortDescription | A short description of your product |
| description | Description of your product |
| imagePath | URL to the image you would like to display with your product |
| version | Your version number |
| updateDate | The last date you updated your product |
| defaultPlaybook | The default playbook yaml file to run |
| author | Author Name |
| organization | Your company |
| organizationUrl | URL for your company website |
Config Field Types
The config.yml file is used to not only provide information about your product, but can also be used to build dynamic forms to provide information to your playbook. Below are the various field types you can use to acquire information from the user and pass it to your playbook.
type:
datacenters
The datacenters field will query the CenturyLink Cloud APIs and bring back all valid datacenters for an account alias.
Options
| parameter | comments |
|---|---|
| name | The name of the variable to pass to Ansible |
| displayName | The field name to display in the UI |
| required | Is this item required for playbook execution (true / false) |
Example
fields:
- type: datacenters
name: my_datacenter
displayName: Select a Datacenter
required: true
groups
The groups field will query the CenturyLink Cloud APIs and display all groups for an account alias. The output can be restricted to a specific datacenter if you include a parent option.
Options
| parameter | comments |
|---|---|
| name | The name of the variable to pass to Ansible |
| displayName | The field name to display in the UI |
| multiple | Can you select multiple groups instead of just one (true / false) |
| parent | Can be used to restrict to only groups in a certain datacenter. (datacenters corresponding name) |
| required | Is this item required for playbook execution (true / false) |
Example
fields:
- type: groups
name: my_groups
displayName: Select Your Groups
multiple: true
required: true
Parent Example
fields:
- type: datacenters
name: my_datacenter
displayName: Select a Datacenter
required: true
- type: groups
name: my_groups
displayName: Select Group
parent: my_datacenter
multiple: false
required: true
servers
The servers field will query the CenturyLink Cloud APIs and display all servers for an account alias.
Options
| parameter | comments |
|---|---|
| name | The name of the variable to pass to Ansible |
| displayName | The field name to display in the UI |
| multiple | Can you select multiple groups instead of just one (true / false) |
| parent | Can be used to restrict to only groups in a certain datacenter. (datacenters corresponding name) |
| required | Is this item required for playbook execution (true / false) |
| inventory | Should the selected servers be added to your Ansible inventory (true / false) |
Example
fields:
- type: servers
name: my_servers
displayName: Select your servers
multiple: true
required: true
inventory: false
textblock
The textblock field can be used to display various types of information or warning type text on the product form.
Options
| parameter | comments |
|---|---|
| name | The name of the variable to pass to Ansible |
| title | The title of your textblock |
| text | The text to display in your textblock |
| level | The level of textblock to display (info / warning / danger) |
Example
fields:
- type: textblock
name: text_block_warning
title: "Warning"
text: "This is showing you the warning text"
level: warning
toggle
The toggle field generates a toggle button that can be used to send a true or false variable to Ansible
Options
parameter | comments name | The name of the variable to pass to Ansible displayName | The field text to display in the UI default | The default state of the toggle button (true / false)
Example
fields:
- type: toggle
name: toggle_field
displayName: "Enable this feature?"
default: true
slider
The slider field allows you to generate a numeric slider
Options
parameter | comments name | The name of the variable to pass to Ansible displayName | The field text to display in the UI min | The minimum value that can be selected max | The maximum value that can be selected default | The default value the slider will be initially set at required | Is this item required for playbook execution (true / false)
Example
fields:
- type: slider
name: slider_value
displayName: "How many things do you want?"
min: 1
max: 10
default: 4
required: true
