YAML configuration

Each configuration YAML file contains a list of configurations to be deployed.

A basic configuration YAML file looks like this:

yamlcopydownload
configs:
- id: test-dashboard
  type:
    api: dashboard
  config:
    name: Test Dashboard
    template: dashboard.json
    parameters:
      owner: Test User

As you can see, the top-level element is configs. Its value is a list of configurations. Each configuration requires the following fields: id, type, and config.

It's also possible to override values from config on the environment and environment-group level. For this, there exist the optional groupOverrides and environmentOverrides fields.

ID

The id field identifies a config within the configurations. It has to be unique for the same configType and project. So it's possible to have, for example, two dashboards with the same id in two different projects. Note that the field is only local to Dynatrace Configuration as Code. It has nothing to do with the ID provided by the Dynatrace API. One important use case for this id is when using reference parameters.

Type

The type field defines the type of the Dynatrace configuration.

A type can be one of the supported Configuration API types or a Setting.

Type - API

An API type can be defined as:

yamlcopydownload
type:
    api: dashboard

or in shorthand form as:

yamlcopydownload
type: dashboard

See the list of supported configuration types for all possible api values.

Type - Setting

Settings are defined by their schema, scope, and an optional schemaVersion.

A Settings type can be defined as:

yamlcopydownload
type:
    settings:
      schema: builtin:tags.auto-tagging
      scope: environment

The scope can be defined as a value, reference, or environment parameter.

In the sample above, it's defined as a shorthand value.

Because many settings are made in the scope of a Dynatrace entity, referencing another configuration's ID is a useful way of configuring entities after they've been created via Dynatrace Configuration as Code.

In the sample below, a web application is configured, and then settings for this application are made.

yamlcopydownload
configs:
- id: MyApp
  type:
    api: application-web
  config:
    name: My Sample Web Application
    template: application.json
- id: MyApp_RUMSettings
  type:
    settings:
      schema: builtin:rum.web.enablement
      scope:
        type: reference
        configType: application-web
        configId: MyApp
        property: id
  config:
    name: MyApp_RUMSettings
    template: rum-settings.json

As you can see, the scope of the rum.web.enablement setting is a reference to the web application.

A Settings type can also contain a field called originObjectId which is the Dynatrace object id of a downloaded Settings 2.0 object and is used to tell whether a particular Settings 2.0 object already exists on an environment (for example, the same environment it was pulled from) or not. Note that originObjectId is optional, meaning that as a user, you don't need to care about it unless you want to match a non-downloaded Settings 2.0 object to a specific existing one:

yamlcopydownload
type:
    settings:
      schema: builtin:tags.auto-tagging
      scope: environment
      originObjectId: vu9U3hXa3q0AAAABABxidWlsdGluOmFwaXMuZGV0ZWN0aW9uLXJ1bGVzAAZ0ZW5hbnQABnRlbmFudAAkYzU0NzVjNGUtZTE1Zi0zY2JhLWFlYjAtNzk5OTlmYzdjNjNjvu9U3hXa3q0

Config

The config field offers the following fields:

• name—Name used to identify objects in the Dynatrace API
• template—Defines templating file used to render the request to the Dynatrace API (for details, see Manage Configuration as Code project)
• optional skip—If set to true, the Configuration as Code CLI will not deploy this configuration
• optional parameters—List of parameters available in the template

Name

The name is used to identify configurations on a Dynatrace environment and ensure that they are updated when they already exist.

For this, the name needs to be used in the JSON template to fill the specific name property of the configuration. Usually, this is also just name, but for some configurations, this may differ; see the special cases described for JSON templates and refer to the API documentation if in doubt.

When downloading, names are automatically extracted and placed in the YAML for you.

When referencing the name in a JSON template, it needs to be used as is, with no additional text or characters around it.

The name property in JSON should always be used like this:

jsoncopydownload
"{{ .name }}"

If you encounter issues with configurations not being created several times instead of updated, check to make sure that your reference to the name does not contain any accidental spaces or other characters that make what is sent to Dynatrace in the JSON different from the name defined in the YAML.

Parameters

Parameters are used to provide values in configuration templates. They are defined as YAML objects with a type entry. This type then further decides how the parameter object is interpreted. One important property of parameters is that they are lazy: the value of a parameter is only evaluated if it's referenced by a configuration that is going to be deployed.

The following parameter types are available:

• Value
• Environment
• Reference
• Compound
• List

Value

The value parameter is the simplest form of a parameter. Besides the type property, it also requires the value property. You can define whatever you like as the value, even nested maps. This value is then accessible in the template file.

Because value parameters are the most common parameter type, there is a special short-form syntax to define them: you can simply provide the value if your parameter is neither an array nor a map.

For example:

yamlcopydownload
parameters:
  threshold: 15
  complexThreshold:
    type: value
    value:
      amount: 15
      unit: sec

In the template of this config, you could then access the threshold parameter via { .threshold }. To access, for example, the amount of the complexThreshold, you could use { .complexThreshold.amount }.

Environment

Parameters of type environment allow you to reference an environment variable. The name of the environment variable to reference is defined via a name property.

• You can provide a default value (via the default property) for cases in which the environment variable is not present.

• If the default property is not set and the env variable is missing, the parameter cannot be resolved. This will fail the deployment.

  Note this is the case only if the parameter is relevant to be deployed. Parameters not referenced by the config to deploy are not evaluated.

Example:

yamlcopydownload
parameters:
  owner:
    type: environment
    name: OWNER
    default: "-"
  target:
    type: environment
    name: TARGET

In the above example:

• The owner parameter will evaluate to the value of the OWNER environment variable. If the environment variable is not present, it will evaluate to value -.
• The target parameter will evaluate to the value of the TARGET environment variable. It will fail the deployment if the variable is not set at deployment time.

Reference

Because it's often necessary to reference a property of another configuration, Monaco offers a special reference parameter. This parameter allows one configuration to depend on almost any parameter of another config.

To achieve this, a parameter of type reference defines project, configType,configId, and property properties to tell Monaco where to get its value.

yamlcopydownload
parameters:
  mz_id:
    type: reference
    project: project-1
    configType: management-zone
    configId: main
    property: id

In the sample above, the value of mz_id will be the Dynatrace object ID of the configuration of type management-zone with ID main from the project-1 project.

The property can be any parameter of the target config, or one of the special properties name or id.

The id property will be the ID of the referenced Dynatrace object on the targeted environment. For example, this allows you to create a Web Application and reference its Monitored Entity ID in a Synthetic Test.

Dynatrace Configuration as Code will make sure that the deployment of configuration is ordered and that the dependent config is deployed first.

If you configure a cycle of dependencies, the deployment will fail with an error.

Short notation

Because reference parameters are one of the most common parameter types, there is a special short-form syntax to define them as an array:

• Syntax: [ "{project}", "{configType}", "{configId}", "{property}" ]
• Example: mz_id: ["project-1", "management-zone", "main", "id"]

Note that in this case, no type is needed, as the type is inferred based on the syntax.

Partial references

It's possible to omit some reference fields. In this case, they will be filled with the same value as the current config.

Generally, you might want to use this for simplicities sake when referencing configuration within the same project - simply omit the field.

yamlcopydownload
parameters:
  mz_id:
    type: reference
    configType: management-zone
    configId: main
    property: id

While it's possible to omit configType and even configId, note that you can only leave the upper-most level empty and can't leave a gap. So if configType is omitted, so must project.

Below you find a full sample (using shorthand references):

• infrastructure/management-zone/config.yaml

  yamlcopydownload
  configs:
  - id: main
    type:
      api: management-zone
    config:
      name: "Main zone"
      template: "zone.json"

• development/management-zone/config.yaml

  yamlcopydownload
  configs:
  - id: development
    type:
      api: management-zone
    config:
      name: "Development zone"
      template: "zone.json"

• development/dashboard/config.yaml

  yamlcopydownload
  configs:
  - id: a_dashboard
    type:
      api: dashboard
    config:
      name: "Overview dashboard"
      template: "dashboard.json"
  - id: overview
    type:
      api: dashboard
    config:
      name: "Overview dashboard"
      template: "dashboard.json"
      parameters:
        zoneId: ["infrastructure", "management-zone", "main", "id"]
        devZoneId: ["management-zone", "development", "id"] # inferred project 'development'
        otherDashboard: ["a_dashboard", "id"] # inferred project 'development' and type 'dashboard'

Compound

The compound parameter is a parameter composed of other parameters of the same config. This parameter requires two properties:

• A format string
• A list of references to all referenced parameters.

The format string can be any string. To use parameters in it, use the syntax {{ .parameter }}, where parameter is the name of the parameter to be filled in.

For example:

yamlcopydownload
parameters:
  example:
    type: compound
    format: "{{ .greeting }} {{ .entity }}!"
    references:
      - greeting
      - entity
  greeting: "Hello"
  entity: "World"

This would produce the value Hello World! for example. Compound parameters can also be used for more complex values, such as in the following example:

yamlcopydownload
parameters:
  example:
    type: compound
    format: "{{ .resource.name }}: {{ .resource.percent }}%"
    references:
      - resource
  progress:
    type: value
    value:
      name: "Health"
      percent: 40

This would produce the value Health: 40%, for example.

Even though referenced parameters can only be from the same config, by using the reference parameter, it's possible to make a compound parameter with other configs. This is also true for environment variables.

yamlcopydownload
parameters:
  example:
    type: compound
    format: "{{ .user }}'s dashboard is {{ .status }}"
    references:
      - user
      - status
  user:
    type: environment
    name: USER_NAME
  status:
    type: reference
    configType: dashboard
    configId: dashboard
    property: status

List

Parameters of type list allow you to define lists of value parameters. When written into a template, these are written as a JSON list surrounded by square brackets and separated by commas.

This type of parameter is generally useful when you require a simple list of things, such as emails or identifiers, that can be filled with any kind of value parameter.

For example:

yamlcopydownload
parameters:
  recipients:
    type: list
    values:
        - first.last@company.com
        - someone.else@company.com
  geolocations:
    type: list
    values: ["GEOLOCATION-1234567", "GEOLOCATION-7654321"]

As shown in the example above, you can define the list values either line by line or as an array in YAML.

Note: When using a list parameter value in a JSON template, make sure to just reference the value without any extra brackets.

jsoncopydownload
{
   "emails": {{ .recipients }}
}

This differs from the sometimes used string list in v1, for which the template needed to include square brackets (for example, "emails": [ {{ .recipients }} ]). When such lists are encountered when converting a v1 configuration, templates are automatically updated.

String escaping of config

In general, all YAML values are escaped before being added to a configuration uploaded to Dynatrace. This ensures that fully filled templates are valid JSON when uploading. Any newlines, special characters such as double quotes, and so on are escaped.

yamlcopydownload
parameters:
    name: "Dev"
    example1: "This is \\n already escaped"
    example2: "This will \n be escaped"
    example3: This "will" be escaped too
    text: |
        This will also
        be escaped

Overriding configuration per environment

There are many cases in which a configuration is similar but not the same between environments. Examples:

• An alert is sent to a different Slack channel for staging and production environments
• A service's configuration should be skipped because it's not yet released

To enable this, you can override values of configurations on an environment and environment-group level using the groupOverrides and environmentOverrides fields.

Both are generally defined in the same way, differing only in whether they're applied to a group or a single environment. You can define the group/environment name to target and any configuration properties to modify.

In the example below, a configuration will not be deployed (skipped) to the "production-environments" group and gets some special configuration applied for two environments:

yamlcopydownload
configs:
- id: test-dashboard
  type:
    api: dashboard
  config:
    name: Test Dashboard
    template: dashboard.json
    parameters:
      owner: Test User
      content: "Some Text ..."
  environmentOverrides:
  - environment: dev-env-42
    override:
      name: Special Dev Dashboard
      parameters:
        content: "Some even better Text!"
  - environment: staging-env-21
    override:
      name: Special Staging Dashboard
      parameters:
        content: "Some much better Text!"
  groupOverrides:
  - group: production-environments
    override:
      skip: true