103 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
103 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
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# HIL
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[](https://godoc.org/github.com/hashicorp/hil) [](https://travis-ci.org/hashicorp/hil)
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HIL (HashiCorp Interpolation Language) is a lightweight embedded language used
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primarily for configuration interpolation. The goal of HIL is to make a simple
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language for interpolations in the various configurations of HashiCorp tools.
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HIL is built to interpolate any string, but is in use by HashiCorp primarily
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with [HCL](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl). HCL is _not required_ in any
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way for use with HIL.
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HIL isn't meant to be a general purpose language. It was built for basic
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configuration interpolations. Therefore, you can't currently write functions,
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have conditionals, set intermediary variables, etc. within HIL itself. It is
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possible some of these may be added later but the right use case must exist.
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## Why?
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Many of our tools have support for something similar to templates, but
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within the configuration itself. The most prominent requirement was in
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[Terraform](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform) where we wanted the
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configuration to be able to reference values from elsewhere in the
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configuration. Example:
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foo = "hi ${var.world}"
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We originally used a full templating language for this, but found it
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was too heavy weight. Additionally, many full languages required bindings
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to C (and thus the usage of cgo) which we try to avoid to make cross-compilation
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easier. We then moved to very basic regular expression based
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string replacement, but found the need for basic arithmetic and function
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calls resulting in overly complex regular expressions.
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Ultimately, we wrote our own mini-language within Terraform itself. As
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we built other projects such as [Nomad](https://nomadproject.io) and
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[Otto](https://ottoproject.io), the need for basic interpolations arose
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again.
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Thus HIL was born. It is extracted from Terraform, cleaned up, and
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better tested for general purpose use.
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## Syntax
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For a complete grammar, please see the parser itself. A high-level overview
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of the syntax and grammer is listed here.
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Code begins within `${` and `}`. Outside of this, text is treated
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literally. For example, `foo` is a valid HIL program that is just the
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string "foo", but `foo ${bar}` is an HIL program that is the string "foo "
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concatened with the value of `bar`. For the remainder of the syntax
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docs, we'll assume you're within `${}`.
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* Identifiers are any text in the format of `[a-zA-Z0-9-.]`. Example
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identifiers: `foo`, `var.foo`, `foo-bar`.
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* Strings are double quoted and can contain any UTF-8 characters.
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Example: `"Hello, World"`
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* Numbers are assumed to be base 10. If you prefix a number with 0x,
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it is treated as a hexadecimal. If it is prefixed with 0, it is
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treated as an octal. Numbers can be in scientific notation: "1e10".
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* Unary `-` can be used for negative numbers. Example: `-10` or `-0.2`
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* Boolean values: `true`, `false`
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* The following arithmetic operations are allowed: +, -, *, /, %.
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* Function calls are in the form of `name(arg1, arg2, ...)`. Example:
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`add(1, 5)`. Arguments can be any valid HIL expression, example:
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`add(1, var.foo)` or even nested function calls:
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`add(1, get("some value"))`.
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* Within strings, further interpolations can be opened with `${}`.
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Example: `"Hello ${nested}"`. A full example including the
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original `${}` (remember this list assumes were inside of one
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already) could be: `foo ${func("hello ${var.foo}")}`.
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## Language Changes
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We've used this mini-language in Terraform for years. For backwards compatibility
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reasons, we're unlikely to make an incompatible change to the language but
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we're not currently making that promise, either.
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The internal API of this project may very well change as we evolve it
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to work with more of our projects. We recommend using some sort of dependency
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management solution with this package.
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## Future Changes
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The following changes are already planned to be made at some point:
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* Richer types: lists, maps, etc.
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* Convert to a more standard Go parser structure similar to HCL. This
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will improve our error messaging as well as allow us to have automatic
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formatting.
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* Allow interpolations to result in more types than just a string. While
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within the interpolation basic types are honored, the result is always
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a string.
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