YAML Export Templates

[ambsw-technology]

Our legacy YAML files include inline documentation, e.g.

client:
  # The client name is:
  #  - exposed to the algorithm/process engine through the ENV directive for selecting configurations
  #  - used to set Django's sites value
  #  - used to configure the Mirth server name
  name: demo
  # Release determines which "tags" may be uploaded to the machine.  Accepted values are `dev`, `alpha`, `beta`, and
  # `production`. For example, a production system will not accept a tag like `1.x.x-dev`.
  release: beta

When extracting configurations from SSM, it'd be great to be able to preserve/leverage similar documentation. I'm not sure if any of the YAML parsers can preserve comments, but it would be nice if I could select a YAML file as a "template" and have it overwrite (or append) key-value pairs, preserving whatever documentation already exist.

Obviously, this would need to be combined with path-specific exports or adding new clients/services would be a mess. There would definitely be some edge cases (e.g. whether to repeat templates in lists), but it'd be useful to address the simplest/most general case and refine as-needed.

[ambsw-technology]

Obviously, this request would not work as well with the -p behavior (if that even works on init). You'd need to be able to select a specific path (e.g. /service/<service>/dev or /service/<service>/prod or the template would need to include sections for dev and prod containing all of the same text.

[ambsw-technology]

Did some digging. Per this SO answer, PyYAML discards comments when parsing. There are several other projects (some likely drop-in replacements) that could be used to support this.