Hi all, Pulumi noob here and looking for some info on best practice around using variables. I asked chatgpt and it suggested the following Put stack variables in the stack yaml - eg myApp.dev.yaml Initialise a config within the pulumi context and have an explicit Require() for the required variables - this bit is something I haven't seen in the docs Eg: *myApp.de*v.yaml

config:
  transactionsDb:
    locationId: nam5

firestore.go

package main

import (
	"github.com/pulumi/pulumi-gcp/sdk/v7/go/gcp/firestore"
	"github.com/pulumi/pulumi/sdk/v3/go/pulumi"
	"github.com/pulumi/pulumi/sdk/v3/go/pulumi/config"
)

func transactionsFirestoreDb() {
	pulumi.Run(func(ctx *pulumi.Context) error {
		cfg := config.New(ctx, "")
		locationId := cfg.Require("transactionsDb:locationId")

		_, err := firestore.NewDatabase(ctx, "database", &firestore.DatabaseArgs{
			LocationId:                    pulumi.String(locationId),
		})
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
		return nil
	})
}

Is that right or is it fine to skip those Require()'s?

Relevant docs snippet: > Configuration values can be retrieved for a given stack using either

config.Get

or

config.Require

. Using

config.Get

will return

nil

if the configuration value was not provided, and

config.Require

will raise an exception with a helpful error message to prevent the deployment from continuing until the variable has been set using the CLI. https://www.pulumi.com/docs/concepts/config/#code

That's what I get for glancing at docs 🤦‍♂️ Thankyou!

Yes, that seems right 👍 But your original code will work as well.

n.b. if your project name is

transactionsDb

then

New(ctx, "")

would provide the same result (i.e. if

""

then namespace is set to your project's name)

I think the key is to understand that

cfg := config.New(ctx, "transactionsDb")
locationId := cfg.Require(locationId")

and

cfg := config.New(ctx, "")
locationId := cfg.Require("transcationsDb:locationId")

give the same result, right?

well wait you wouldn't need that namespace in the

Require

there if the config value is in the project namespace. it's a bit confusing

And

config.New(ctx, "name-of-my-project")

is identical to

config.New(ctx,"")

? That's something I did not know

Ah okay I wasn't sure if the ':' separator was valid inside the Require

I don't have the code right now, but I'm pretty sure I've used

config = pulumi.Config(); config.get("aws:region")

before

if the config key [you request] doesn't contain a

:

it will add the namespace implicitly

yeah that makes sense

this ^ yeah. i like to keep as much vars in the (default) project scope and only namespace for providers or when absolutely necessary. ESC helps here too as you have even more control

ah so you prefer something like

config:
  transactionsDbName: transactionsDb
  transactionsDbType: FIRESTORE_NATIVE

over

config:
  transactionsDb:
    name: transactionsDb
    type: FIRESTORE_NATIVE

is that right?

it depends 🙂 e.g. if you've got some massive Pulumi monoproject, that could get annoying and repetitive. but that's another thing: I tend to prefer many smaller projects (like microservices microstacks? 😆 ) and stack refs

Yeah I did a lot of "microstacking" with terraform modules, similar concept I guess

heh yeah and then you start bolting on something like terragrunt or start doing dark magic with shellscript and then... yeah 😄

We had 100's of environments/aws accounts due to tenancy restrictions so I ended up writing a script that read a JSON file that described every environment, and then built a gitlab-ci file and all the terraform files