Automation

KCL provides many automation related capabilities, mainly including tools and multilingual APIs. Via package_identifier : key_identifier mode, KCL supports the indexing of any configured key value, thus completing the addition, deletion, modification and query of any key value. For example, the following figure shows that we can directly execute the following command to modify the image. The code diff before and after modification is also shown in the figure.

In addition, the automation capability of KCL can be realized and integrated into CI/CD.

KCL allows us to directly modify the values in the configuration model through the KCL CLI -O|--overrides parameter. The parameter contains three parts e.g., pkg, identifier, attribute and override_value.

kcl main.k -O override_spec

• override_spec represents a unified representation of the configuration model fields and values that need to be modified

override_spec: [[pkgpath] ":"] identifier ("=" value | "-")

• pkgpath: Indicates the path of the package whose identifier needs to be modified, usually in the form of a.b.c. For the main package, pkgpath is expressed as __main__, which can be omitted. If omitted, it means the main package.
• identifier: Indicates the identifier that needs to modify the configuration, usually in the form of a.b.c.
• value: Indicates the value of the configuration that needs to be modified, which can be any legal KCL expression, such as number/string literal value, list/dict/schema expression, etc.
• =: means to modify the value of identifier.
  • When the identifier exists, modify the value of the existing identifier to value.
  • When identifier does not exist, add the identifier attribute and set its value to value.
• -: means to delete the identifier attribute.
  • When the identifier exists, delete it directly.
  • When the identifier does not exist, no modification is made to the configuration.

Note: When identifier appears multiple times, modify/delete all identifier values

Besides, we provide OverrideFile API to achieve the same capabilities. For details, refer to KCL APIs.

Examples

Override Update Sample

KCL code:

schema Person:
    name: str
    age: int

person = Person {
    name = "Alice"
    age = 18
}

The command is

kcl main.k -O :person.name=\"Bob\" -O :person.age=10

The output is

person:
  name: Bob
  age: 10

Besides, when we use KCL CLI -d argument, the KCL file will be modified to the following content at the same time

kcl main.k -O :person.name=\"Bob\" -O :person.age=10 -d

schema Person:
    name: str
    age: int

person = Person {
    name = "Bob"
    age = 10
}

Another more complicated example:

schema Person:
    name: str
    age: int
    ids?: [int]

person = Person {
    name = "Alice"
    age = 10
}

The command is

kcl main.k -O :person.ids=\[1,2\]

The output is

person:
  name: Alice
  age: 10
  ids:
  - 1
  - 2

Override Delete Sample

KCL code:

schema Config:
    x?: int = 1
    y?: str = "s"
    
config = Config {
    x = 2
}

The command is

kcl main.k -O config.x-

The output is

config:
  x: 1
  y: s