Using the Jython step delegate in control tasks || XebiaLabs documentation

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In XL Deploy, you can define control tasks that allow you to execute actions from the XL Deploy GUI or CLI. One way to create a custom control task is to use a delegate. XL Deploy includes a predefined delegate called JythonDelegate that accepts a Jython script that it will execute.

This topic describes how to use JythonDelegate to create a custom control task that prints all environment variables on the local host.

Note: The sample scripts in this topic always run on the XL Deploy server. To run a script on a remote host, you must implement that behaviour in your custom script.

Define a control task

Define a control task in the XL_DEPLOY_SERVER_HOME/ext/synthetic.xml file. This example adds a method to overthere.LocalHost using a type modification. The method tag defines a control task named showEnvironmentVariables. The delegate parameter defines the type of delegate and the script parameter defines the Python script that will perform the action.

<type-modification type="overthere.LocalHost">
    <method name="ShowEnvironmentVariables"
            description="Show environment variables"
            delegate="jythonScript"
            script="scripts/env.py">
    </method>
</type-modification>

Create a Jython script

This is an example of a Jython script that prints the environment variables that are available on a host:

import os

for env in os.environ:
    print("{0}={1}".format(env, os.environ[env]))

After defining the control task and creating the script, restart the XL Deploy server.

Run the control task

In XL Deploy, go to the Explorer, hover over an overthere.LocalHost configuration item (CI), and click Menu button . You can see the new control task in the menu.

showEnvironmentVariables control task in menu

Click ShowEnvironmentVariables to see the steps of the control task. After it executes, it returns the environment variables on the host.

showEnvironmentVariables control task steps

Define a control task with parameters

The showEnvironmentVariables control task defined above prints all environment variables on a host. If you want to limit the control task results, define a method parameter that will be passed to the Jython script.

Update the control task

Change the definition in XL_DEPLOY_SERVER_HOME/ext/synthetic.xml as follows:

<type-modification type="overthere.LocalHost">
    <method name="ShowEnvironmentVariables" description="Show environment variables" delegate="jythonScript" script="scripts/env.py">
        <parameters>
            <parameter name="limit" kind="integer" description="number of environment variables to expect" default="-1"/>
        </parameters>
    </method>
</type-modification>

This defines a parameter called limit of type integer. The default value of -1 means that all environment variables will be listed.

Update the Jython script

The Jython script can access the method parameter using the params object. This is an implicit object that is available to the Jython script that stores all method parameters. Other implicit objects that are available to the script are args, which is a dictionary that contains arguments passed to the script, and thisCi, which refers to the configuration item on which the control action is defined.

import os

print("Environment variables on the host with name {0}".format(thisCi.name))

limit = params["limit"]
env_var_keys = []
if limit == -1:
    env_var_keys = os.environ.keys()
else:
    env_var_keys = os.environ.keys()[:limit]

for env in env_var_keys:
    print("{0}={1}".format(env, os.environ[env]))

Run the control task

After restarting the XL Deploy server and selecting the ShowEnvironmentVariables, you will be able to provide a limit for the control task results.

showEnvironmentVariables control task with limit parameter