Is Ansbile purely declarative? I kept hearing about it's virtues, but it didn't make sense to me how something with loops, conditions, variable assignment and substitution, input/output -- how that could be "purely declarative" the way Kubernetes or Terraform is. I heard a few dissenting voices, which described it more like "programming in YAML". So I thought: "can you write an application in Ansible". The answer is: YES.
Ansible is not a purely declarative configuration management tool, it's an ad-hoc task runner in a category I call "barely imperative". To hit that point harder, I literally wrote a web app using Ansible as a general purpose language. If you're asking "why would you do that" -- instead ask yourself why you would do anything in Ansible: a terrible general purpose language expressed in YAML?
The deception.rb file is a Sinatra wrapper, which accepts HTTP requests, JSONifies them for Ansible, then passes the results back on to the UA. There is zero application logic in Ruby here, 100% of the app is written in Ansible.
The simple app presents an upload form where you upload an image. Uploaded images are displayed on the index.
main.yml is the router, it calls different routes based on METHOD and PATH.
There is no documentation, because, why not, LOL.
If you try this, you'll need to edit the datadir attribute in deception.rb
- Get the description feature working
- Write a session manager
- Store data in Redis (shell out to redis-cli, why not?)
- Tabular results (should be no problem with Jinja)
- Spinning images?