chef-browser

Easily browse through Chef data in a user-friendly format using your favorite browser. Chef-browser allows you to list (and search through) nodes, environments, roles and data bags (and items) as well as view their details: basic information plus pre-formatted JSON data. Shorten the time necessary to access often used information with saved searches.

Installation

To install chef-browser, run:

$ bundle install

Usage

Create a settings.rb file. Provide your server url, client name and the path to the client key. You can add additional connection options, but that's not necessary to run chef-browser properly. A full list of available options can be found in Ridley's yard documentation.

Run:

$ rackup config.ru
Puma 2.6.0 starting...
* Min threads: 0, max threads: 16
* Environment: development
* Listening on tcp://0.0.0.0:9292

Go to http://0.0.0.0:9292.

You can define saved searches. To do that, open your settings.rb file and follow this syntax:

node_search['MySQL Servers'] = 'mysql_server_root_password:*'
node_search['Staging'] = 'chef_environment:staging'

You can define as many saved searches as you like. Your saved searches will appear as a dropdown list next to the search box. Right now this option works only for nodes.

Chef-browser mimics knife's fuzzy searches, so entering "foo*" in the search box will result in performing a search for "tags:foo OR roles:foo OR fqdn:foo OR addresses:foo".

In order to save on bandwidth and memory, partial searches are enabled for users of Chef 11.0. If you use Chef 10.x, disable the use_partial_search option in your settings.rb file.

Accessible data

Chef-browser allows you to access the following:

nodes, environments, roles and data bags available on your server,
details of each node:
- name, ip address, fqdn, environment, tags, run list,
- attributes presented using JSONpath in a handy, filterable table,
details of each environment:
- cookbooks and their versions,
- default and override attributes,
details of each role:
- run lists and env_run_lists (if present),
- default and override attributes,
details of bags and data bag items.

Where possible, tags, environment names and role views link to appropriate nodes, while run list elements link to other roles.

Third party

Chef-browser is a Sinatra-based app. It uses Ridley to communicate with the Chef server. Handling configuration settings is done using the Tinyconfig library. CSS & Javascript are provided by Twitter's Bootstrap. jQuery.FilterTable was used to help present data.

Safety

Any safety precautions are left on the side of the user. Chef browser is a minimal app that does not provide additional safety-enhancing features apart from what's built in Ridley.

Ruby versions

Chef-browser works with Ruby 1.9.3, Ruby 2.0.0, JRuby and RBX.

Contributing

Fork the repo.
Create a branch from the develop branch and name it 'feature/name-of-feature': git checkout -b feature/my-new-feature (We follow [this branching model] (http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/))
Make sure you test your new feature.
Commit your changes together with specs for them: git commit -am 'Add some feature'
Push your changes to your feature branch.
Submit a pull request to the develop repository. Describe your feature in the pull request. Make sure you commit the specs.
A pull request does not necessarily need to represent the final, finished feature. Feel free to treat it as a base for discussion.

webmat / chef-browser