feat(appset): Add stringTemplate field to spec

[mrmm]

Closes: #11213

This will introduce a new field stringTemplate that will allow a less restrictive templating of the Application to be generated as the current design is limited by field.

Related discussions:

• feat: ApplicationSet Go template #10026 (comment)

This work was started in #9873

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[mrmm]

Hey, @speedfl I hope you are doing well,

I am struggling with having a good unit test to run for the RenderTemplateParams (that was moved to templating.go file), do you have a suggestion to fix this please 🙏

[speedfl]

@mrmm are you sure you want to create the method renderWithGoTemplate. Can the Replace in utils do the job ?

Concerning your tests as you are passing the stringTemplate you need to add test with stringTemplate != nil in the utils_test.go

• One test success
• One test with UnmarshalStrict failure

You can add a test on yaml templating error

https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/blob/master/applicationset/utils/utils_test.go#L60

Something like

template := "hello: {{ .one }}"

	tests = append(tests, struct {
		name        string
		fieldVal    string
		template    *string
		params      map[string]interface{}
		expectedVal string
	}{
		name:        "test",
		fieldVal:    "",
		template:    &template,
		expectedVal: "hello: world",
		params: map[string]interface{}{
			"one":   "world",
			"three": "four",
		},
	})

[mrmm]

Hello @speedfl, thanks for the prompt reply,

@mrmm are you sure you want to create the method renderWithGoTemplate. Can the Replace in utils do the job ?

Yes totally, I have just tried to use the work of @rishabh625 (as it was his idea) but using r.Replace does the job (which I have updated in b91759c)

Concerning your tests as you are passing the stringTemplate you need to add test with stringTemplate != nil in the utils_test.go

Thanks for the pointer on how to test, here is my try https://github.com/mrmm/argo-cd/blob/437a9a82fc40e857ec4373297d7a521684bbdc87/applicationset/utils/utils_test.go#L19 but I seem to be running into an Unmarshaling issue for some reason I couldn't find.

(Please let me know if you don't have the time to check this I will gladly stop pinging here 🙏 )

---

               Error Trace:    templating_test.go:554
               Error:          Received unexpected error:
                               yaml: unmarshal errors:
                                 line 1: field metadata not found in type v1alpha1.Application
                                 line 6: field repoURL not found in type v1alpha1.ApplicationSource
                                 line 7: field targetRevision not found in type v1alpha1.ApplicationSource
                                 line 12: field syncPolicy not found in type v1alpha1.ApplicationSpec
               Test:           TestRenderTemplateParamsStringTemplate/text_template

Edit: found my unmarshal mistake in 437a9a8

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Base: 47.00% // Head: 46.95% // Decreases project coverage by -0.05% ⚠️

Coverage data is based on head (fc26e2e) compared to base (9fe4ad3).
Patch coverage: 58.82% of modified lines in pull request are covered.

❗ Current head fc26e2e differs from pull request most recent head 21bbdcc. Consider uploading reports for the commit 21bbdcc to get more accurate results

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           master   #11183      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   47.00%   46.95%   -0.06%     
==========================================
  Files         243      243              
  Lines       40443    40455      +12     
==========================================
- Hits        19012    18995      -17     
- Misses      19520    19546      +26     
- Partials     1911     1914       +3     

Impacted Files	Coverage Δ
.../apis/application/v1alpha1/applicationset_types.go	32.43% <ø> (ø)
...cationset/controllers/applicationset_controller.go	61.02% <33.33%> (-2.95%)	⬇️
applicationset/utils/utils.go	77.43% <63.63%> (-3.25%)	⬇️
...licationset/generators/generator_spec_processor.go	64.76% <66.66%> (-1.24%)	⬇️
applicationset/generators/git.go	85.86% <0.00%> (-1.07%)	⬇️
util/settings/settings.go	48.42% <0.00%> (ø)
applicationset/utils/policy.go	0.00% <0.00%> (ø)
... and 1 more

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[mrmm]

Hey @crenshaw-dev (really sorry for the multiple pings) is this feature still relevant to work on or not?

[adabuleanu]

@mrmm I encountered a situation that may benefit from this feature. This is described in: argoproj/applicationset#609. I would be very grateful if you can take this scenario into consideration when developing this feature (if you did not do that already).

From your experience is there any existing feature that might help with my use-case? I have been going over lots of argocd docs and tickets and ended up here.

[crenshaw-dev]

@mrmm this feature is definitely still relevant, I just haven't had a chance to dig into the code yet. Hopefully for 2.7?

[mrmm]

@mrmm this feature is definitely still relevant, I just haven't had a chance to dig into the code yet. Hopefully for 2.7?

@crenshaw-dev Thanks for the reply, and sorry again for the multiple pings. I just wanted confirmation from a main contributor before dedicating more time to it 🙏 (Thanks for the confirmation).

I will work on this by the end of the week and the next week, hopefully, will have some tests implemented and refined a little bit of the code.

[crenshaw-dev]

@mrmm sounds great!

The main thing I'd want to see in this PR (besides working code, tests, the usual :-D) is documentation clarifying when it makes sense to use stringTemplate vs template.

Specifically, template allows the ApplicationSet author to strictly enforce certain field values (like project) without having to think too long about user input validation. stringTemplate opens things up a bit, so it might not make as much sense when an AppSet author wants to clearly lock things down.

[brunocascio]

Hey there!

I have also this use case where this PR would help: #11589

[crenshaw-dev]

I'm personally not going to be able to prioritize this for 2.7.

If you'd like to advocate for the PR, I'd recommend dropping into one of the contributor meetings. https://github.com/argoproj/argoproj#contributing

Sorry I can't help you out this release cycle, I know you've put a lot of work into it!

[StepanKuksenko]

@mrmm you did a great job I hope you will find time to continue working on this PR to finally deliver the feature

[Gitopolis]

This would work nicely with image updater annotations. Currently we have to hardcode all the annotation keys, which deprives us the flexibility of image lists and update strategies

[blakepettersson]

I think this will be superceded with #14893?

[mrmm]

For everyone watching this PR, due to personal circumstances I was not able to finish up this feature so sorry 🙏.
Thanks @crenshaw-dev for all the help during this PR and hopefully my next PR to go to fulfillment 👌

[crenshaw-dev]

@mrmm thank you for all your effort on this! We'll get some version of it merged sooner or later. 🙂