deckhand/doc/source/layering.rst

..
  Copyright 2017 AT&T Intellectual Property.
  All Rights Reserved.

  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may
  not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain
  a copy of the License at

      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT
  WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
  License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations
  under the License.

.. _layering:

Document Layering
=================

Introduction
------------

Layering provides a restricted data inheritance model intended to help reduce
duplication in configuration. Documents with different ``schema``'s are never
layered together (see the :ref:`substitution` section if you need to combine data
from multiple types of documents).

Layering is controlled in two places:

1. The ``LayeringPolicy`` control document (described below), which defines the
   valid layers and their order of precedence.
2. In the ``metadata.layeringDefinition`` section of normal
   (``metadata.schema=metadata/Document/v1``) documents.

When rendering a particular document, you resolve the chain of parents upward
through the layers, and begin working back down each layer rendering at each
document in the chain.

When rendering each layer, the parent document is used as the starting point,
so the entire contents of the parent are brought forward.  Then the list of
`actions` will be applied in order.  Supported actions are:

* ``merge`` - "deep" merge child data at the specified path into the existing
  data
* ``replace`` - overwrite existing data with child data at the specified path
* ``delete`` - remove the existing data at the specified path

After actions are applied for a given layer, substitutions are applied (see
the Substitution section for details).

.. _parent-selection:

Parent Selection
----------------

Selection of document parents is controlled by the ``parentSelector`` field and
works as follows:

* A given document, ``C``, that specifies a ``parentSelector``, will have
  exactly one parent, ``P``. If comparing layering with inheritance,
  layering, then, does *not* allow multi-inheritance.
* Both ``C`` and ``P`` must have the **same** ``schema``.
* Both ``C`` and ``P`` should have **different** ``metadata.name`` values
  except in the case of :ref:`replacement`.
* Document ``P`` will be the highest-precedence document whose
  ``metadata.labels`` are a **superset** of document C's ``parentSelector``.
  Where:

  * Highest precedence means that ``P`` belongs to the lowest layer
    defined in the ``layerOrder`` list from the ``LayeringPolicy`` which is
    at least one level higher than the layer for ``C``. For example, if ``C``
    has layer ``site``, then its parent ``P`` must at least have layer ``type``
    or above in the following ``layerOrder``:

    ::

      ---
      ...
      layerOrder:
        - global # Highest layer
        - type
        - site   # Lowest layer

  * Superset means that ``P`` **at least** has all the labels in its
    ``metadata.labels`` that child ``C`` references via its ``parentSelector``.
    In other words, parent ``P`` can have more labels than ``C`` uses
    to reference it, but ``C`` must at least have one matching label in its
    ``parentSelector`` with ``P``.

* Deckhand will select ``P`` if it belongs to the highest-precedence layer.
  For example, if ``C`` belongs to layer ``site``, ``P`` belongs to layer
  ``type``, and ``G`` belongs to layer ``global``, then Deckhand will use
  ``P`` as the parent for ``C``. If ``P`` is non-existent, then ``G``
  will be selected instead.

For example, consider the following sample documents:

.. code-block:: yaml

  ---
  schema: deckhand/LayeringPolicy/v1
  metadata:
    schema: metadata/Control/v1
    name: layering-policy
  data:
    layerOrder:
      - global
      - region
      - site
  ---
  schema: example/Kind/v1
  metadata:
    schema: metadata/Document/v1
    name: global-1234
    labels:
      key1: value1
    layeringDefinition:
      abstract: true
      layer: global
  data:
    a:
      x: 1
      y: 2
  ---
  schema: example/Kind/v1
  metadata:
    schema: metadata/Document/v1
    name: region-1234
    labels:
      key1: value1
    layeringDefinition:
      abstract: true
      layer: region
      parentSelector:
        key1: value1
      actions:
        - method: replace
          path: .a
  data:
    a:
      z: 3
  ---
  schema: example/Kind/v1
  metadata:
    schema: metadata/Document/v1
    name: site-1234
    layeringDefinition:
      layer: site
      parentSelector:
        key1: value1
      actions:
        - method: merge
          path: .
  data:
    b: 4

When rendering, the parent chosen for ``site-1234`` will be ``region-1234``,
since it is the highest precedence document that matches the label selector
defined by ``parentSelector``, and the parent chosen for ``region-1234`` will be
``global-1234`` for the same reason. The rendered result for ``site-1234`` would
be:

.. code-block:: yaml

  ---
  schema: example/Kind/v1
  metadata:
    name: site-1234
  data:
    a:
      z: 3
    b: 4

If ``region-1234`` were later removed, then the parent chosen for `site-1234`
would become ``global-1234``, and the rendered result would become:

.. code-block:: yaml

  ---
  schema: example/Kind/v1
  metadata:
    name: site-1234
  data:
    a:
      x: 1
      y: 2
    b: 4

.. TODO: Add figures for this example, with region present, have site point
.. with dotted line at global and indicate in caption (or something) that it's
.. selected for but ignored, because there's a higher-precedence layer to select