Skip to content

Psuedo Parameters

To increase the flexibility of taskcat, we've built-in support for psuedo-parameters that are transposed at runtime for actual values.

Following table describes the supported psuedo-parameters.

Psuedo-Parameter Example Value passed to the CloudFormation stack Details
$[taskcat_autobucket] taskcat-tag-sample-taskcat-project-5fba6597 Note: The S3 Bucket is created
$[taskcat_genaz_1] "us-east-1a" Fetches a single Availability Zone within the region being launched in
$[taskcat_genaz_2] "us-east-1a,us-east-1b" Fetches two AvailabilityZones within the region being launched in
$[taskcat_genaz_3] "us-east-1a,us-east-1b,us-east-1c" Fetches three AvailabilityZones within the region being launched in
$[taskcat_genpass_8A] tI8zN3iX8 An alphanumeric 8-charater random password. The length is customizable.
$[taskcat_genpass_8S] mA5@cB5! An alphanumeric 8-charater random password. The length is customizable.
$[taskcat_random-string] yysuawpwubvotiqgwjcu Generates a random string
$[taskcat_random-numbers] 56188163597280820763 Generates random numbers.
$[taskcat_genuuid] 1c2e3483-2c99-45bb-801d-8af68a3b907b Generates a UUID
$[taskcat_getval_MyAppPassword] Dynamically generated password for the MyAppPassword parameter Retreives another parameter value.
$[taskcat_current_region] "us-east-2" Region the test is being prepared for
$[taskcat_project_name] "my-example-project" Name of the project being tested
$[taskcat_test_name] "cluster-with-windows-ad" Name of the test being tested
$[taskcat_ssm_/path/to/ssm/parameter] SSM Parameter Value Retreives values from SSM
$[taskcat_secretsmanager_SecretNameOrARN] Value from SecretsManager Retreives a secret value from SecretsManager given an name or ARN

From: (defined in taskcat.yaml')

     InstanceType: t2.small
     AvailablityZones: $[taskcat_genaz_2]
     RandomString: $[taskcat_random-string]
     RandomNumbers: $[taskcat_random-numbers]
     GenerateUUID: $[taskcat_genuuid]
     Password: $[taskcat_genpass_8A]
     PasswordConfirm: $[taskcat_getval_Password]

To: (At runtime passed to cloudformation API)

     InstanceType: t2.small
     AvailablityZones: us-east-1a: us-east1b
     RandomString: yysuawpwubvotiqgwjcu
     RandomNumbers: 56188163597280820763
     GenerateUUID: 1c2e3483-2c99-45bb-801d-8af68a3b907b
     Password: tI8zN3iX8
     PasswordConfirm: tI8zN3iX8