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PuppetDB: Events endpoint

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  1. /pdb/query/v4/events
    1. URL parameters
    2. Query operators
    3. Query fields
    4. Subquery relationships
    5. Response format
    6. Examples
  2. Paging

Puppet agent nodes submit reports after their runs, and the Puppet master forwards these to PuppetDB. Each report includes:

  • Data about the entire run
  • Metadata about the report
  • Many events, describing what happened during the run

Once this information is stored in PuppetDB, it can be queried in various ways.

  • You can query data about the run and report metadata by making an HTTP request to the /reports endpoint.
  • You can query data about individual events by making an HTTP request to the /events endpoint.
  • You can query summaries of event data by making an HTTP request to the /event-counts or aggregate-event-counts endpoints.

/pdb/query/v4/events

Returns all resource events matching the given query. (Resource events are generated from Puppet reports.)

URL parameters

  • query: optional. A JSON array of query predicates, in prefix form (["<OPERATOR>", "<FIELD>", "<VALUE>"]). See the sections below for the supported operators and fields. For general info about queries, see the page on query structure. If query is omitted, all events are returned.

  • distinct_resources: optional. Boolean. (For example, distinct_resources=true.) (EXPERIMENTAL: it is possible that the behavior of this parameter may change in future releases.) If specified, the result set will only return the most recent event for a given resource on a given node.

    For example: if the resource File[/tmp/foo] was failing on some node but has since been fixed and is now succeeding, then a “normal” event query might return both the success and failure events. A query with distinct_resources=true would only return the success event, since this is the most recent event for that resource.

    Since a distinct_resources query can be expensive, it requires a limited window of time to examine. Use the distinct_start_time and distinct_end_time parameters to define this interval. Issuing a distinct_resources query without specifying both of these parameters will cause an error.

  • distinct_start_time: used with distinct_resources. The start of the window of time to examine, as an ISO-8601 compatible date/time string.
  • distinct_end_time: used with distinct_resources. The end of the window of time to examine, as an ISO-8601 compatible date/time string.

Query operators

See the AST query language page for the full list of available operators.

Query fields

Note: Fields that allow NULL values

In the case of a skipped resource event, some of the fields of an event may not have values. Queries using equality (=) and inequality (!=) will not return null values. See the null? operator, if you want to query for nodes that do not have a value.

  • certname (string): the name of the node on which the event occurred.

  • report (string): the ID of the report that the event occurred in. These IDs can be acquired via event queries or via the /reports query endpoint.

  • status (string): the status of the event. Legal values are success, failure, noop, and skipped.

  • timestamp (timestamp): the timestamp (from the Puppet agent) at which the event occurred. Timestamps are always ISO-8601 compatible date/time strings.

  • run_start_time (timestamp): the timestamp (from the Puppet agent) at which the Puppet run began. Timestamps are always ISO-8601 compatible date/time strings.

  • run_end_time (timestamp): the timestamp (from the Puppet agent) at which the Puppet run finished. Timestamps are always ISO-8601 compatible date/time strings.

  • report_receive_time (timestamp): the timestamp (from the PuppetDB server) at which the Puppet report was received. Timestamps are always ISO-8601 compatible date/time strings.

  • resource_type (string, with first letter always capitalized): the type of resource that the event occurred on, such as File, Package, etc.

  • resource_title (string): the title of the resource on which the event occurred.

  • property (string or null): the property/parameter of the resource on which the event occurred. For example, on a Package resource, this field might have a value of ensure. Note: this field may contain NULL values; see notes above.

  • new_value (string or null): the new value that Puppet was attempting to set for the specified resource property. Any rich data values will appear as readable strings. Note: this field may contain NULL values; see notes above.

  • old_value (string or null): the previous value of the resource property, which Puppet was attempting to change. Any rich data values will appear as readable strings. Note: this field may contain NULL values; see notes above.

  • message (string or null): a description (supplied by the resource provider) of what happened during the event. Note: this field may contain NULL values; see notes above.

  • file (string or null): the manifest file in which the resource definition is located. Note: this field may contain NULL values; see notes above.

  • line (number or null): the line (of the containing manifest file) at which the resource definition can be found. Note: this field may contain NULL values; see notes above.

  • containing_class (string or null): the Puppet class where this resource is declared. Note: this field may contain NULL values; see notes above.

  • latest_report? (Boolean): whether the event occurred in the most recent Puppet run (per-node). Note: the value of this field is always Boolean (true or false without quotes), and it is not supported by the regex match operator.

  • environment (string): the environment associated with the reporting node.

  • configuration_version (string): an identifier string that Puppet uses to match a specific catalog for a node to a specific Puppet run.

  • containment_path (array of strings, where each string is a containment path element): the containment path associated with the event, as an ordered array that ends with the most specific containing element.

  • corrective_change (boolean): whether or not the event represents a “corrective change”, meaning the event rectified configuration drift.

Subquery relationships

The following list contains related entities that can be used to constrain the result set using implicit subqueries. For more information consult the documentation for subqueries.

  • reports: the report associated with an event.
  • environments: the environment associated with an event.

Response format

The response is a JSON array of events that match the input parameters. The array is unordered.

[
  {
    "certname": "foo.localdomain",
    "old_value": "absent",
    "property": "ensure",
    "timestamp": "2012-10-30T19:01:05.000Z",
    "resource_type": "File",
    "resource_title": "/tmp/reportingfoo",
    "new_value": "file",
    "message": "defined content as '{md5}49f68a5c8493ec2c0bf489821c21fc3b'",
    "report": "38ff2aef3ffb7800fe85b322280ade2b867c8d27",
    "status": "success",
    "file": "/home/user/path/to/manifest.pp",
    "line": 6,
    "containment_path": [ "Stage[main]", "Foo", "File[/tmp/reportingfoo]" ],
    "containing_class": "Foo",
    "corrective_change": true,
    "run_start_time": "2012-10-30T19:00:00.000Z",
    "run_end_time": "2012-10-30T19:05:00.000Z",
    "report_receive_time": "2012-10-30T19:06:00.000Z"
  },
  {
    "certname": "foo.localdomain",
    "old_value": "absent",
    "property": "message",
    "timestamp": "2012-10-30T19:01:05.000Z",
    "resource_type": "Notify",
    "resource_title": "notify, yo",
    "new_value": "notify, yo",
    "message": "defined 'message' as 'notify, yo'",
    "report": "38ff2aef3ffb7800fe85b322280ade2b867c8d27",
    "status": "success",
    "file": "/home/user/path/to/manifest.pp",
    "line": 10,
    "containment_path": [ "Stage[main]", "", "Node[default]", "Notify[notify, yo]" ],
    "containing_class": null,
    "corrective_change": true,
    "run_start_time": "2012-10-30T19:00:00.000Z",
    "run_end_time": "2012-10-30T19:05:00.000Z",
    "report_receive_time": "2012-10-30T19:06:00.000Z"
  }
]

Examples

Using curl to query information about events:

curl -G 'http://localhost:8080/pdb/query/v4/events' \
  --data-urlencode 'query=["=", "report", "38ff2aef3ffb7800fe85b322280ade2b867c8d27"]' \
  --data-urlencode 'limit=1000'

For all events in the report with hash ‘38ff2aef3ffb7800fe85b322280ade2b867c8d27’, use this JSON query structure:

["=", "report", "38ff2aef3ffb7800fe85b322280ade2b867c8d27"]

To retrieve all of the events within a given time period:

["and", ["<", "timestamp", "2011-01-01T12:01:00-03:00"],
  [">", "timestamp", "2011-01-01T12:00:00-03:00"]]

To retrieve all of the ‘failure’ events for nodes with name matching ‘foo.*’ and resources of type ‘Service’:

["and", ["=", "status", "failure"],
  ["~", "certname", "foo.\*"],
  ["=", "resource_type", "Service"]]

To retrieve latest events that are tied to the class found in your update.pp file:

["and", ["=", "latest_report?", true],
  ["~", "file", "update.pp"]]

To retrieve event status counts for each node:

curl -X GET http://localhost:8080/pdb/query/v4/events --data-urlencode \
'query=["extract", [["function", "count"], "status","certname"],
                   ["group_by","status","certname"]]'

Paging

This endpoint supports paged results via the common PuppetDB paging URL parameters. For more information, please see the documentation on paging.

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