Parameter Overrides were added to the taskcat to solve a couple of common problems. First, many templates share common parameters that are unique to an AWS account, like a KeyPair name or an S3 Bucket, overrides provided a way to store those centrally for all your projects. Second, we didn’t want to add sensitive data (usernames, passwords, tokens) to a git repository. The idea was to store sensitive/unique data outside of a git repository, but still execute a test using this data. To that end, any parameter defined in the global config will take precedence over the same parameter in a project-level config.
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 alphanumberic 8-charater random password. The length is customizable. |
$[taskcat_genpass_8S] |
mA5@cB5! | An alphanumberic 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 |