Custom Scrapers

Custom scrapers allow you to scrape from sources that are not well-defined. For example, you can scrape a file sitting on disk, a file inside a Kubernetes Pod, or data from a SQL query.

file-scraper.yaml
apiVersion: configs.flanksource.com/v1
kind: ScrapeConfig
metadata:
  name: file-scraper
spec:
  file:
    - type: $.Config.InstanceType
      id: $.Config.InstanceId
      path:
        - config*.json
        - test*.json

config-file.json
{
  "Config": {
    "InstanceId": "i-1234567890abcdef0",
    "InstanceType": "t2.micro"
  }
}

Mapping

Custom scrapers require defining the id, type, and class for each scraped item. For example, when scraping a file containing a JSON array, where each array element represents a config item, you need to specify the id, type, and config class for these items. Achieve this by utilizing mappings in your custom scraper configuration.

Field	Description	Scheme	Required
items	A path pointing to an array, each item will be created as a a separate config item, all other JSONPath will be evaluated from the new items root	JSONPath	true
id	ID for the config item	JSONPath	true
type	Type for the config item	JSONPath	true
class	Class for the config item. (Defaults to type)	JSONPath
name	Name for the config item	JSONPath
format	Format of the config source. Defaults to json	json, xml or properties See Formats
createFields	Fields to use to determine the items created date, if not specified or the field is not found, defaults to scrape time	[]JSONPath
deleteFields	Fields to use to determine when an item was deleted if not specified or the field is not found, defaults to scrape time of when the item was no longer detected	[]JSONPath
timestampFormat	Timestamp format of createFields and deleteFields. (Default 2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00)	time.Format
full	Scrape result includes the full metadata of a config, including possible changes, See Change Extraction	bool

Formats

JSON

Config items are stored as jsonb fields in PostgreSQL.

The JSON used is typically returned by a resource provider. e.g. kubectl get -o json or aws --output=json.

When displaying the config, the UI will automatically convert the JSON data to YAML for improved readability.

XML / Properties

Non JSON files are stored as JSON using:

{
 "format": "xml",
 "content": "<root>..</root>"
}

Non JSON content can still be accessed in scripts using config.content

The UI will format and render XML appropriately.

Change Extraction

Custom scrapers can also be used to ingest changes from external systems, by using the full option. In this example, the scraped JSON contains the actual config under config and a list of changes under changes.

apiVersion: configs.flanksource.com/v1
kind: ScrapeConfig
metadata:
  name: file-scraper
spec:
  full: true
  file:
    - type: Car
      id: $.reg_no
      paths:
        - fixtures/data/car_changes.json

{
  "reg_no": "A123",
  "config": {
    "meta": "this is the actual config that'll be stored."
  },
  "changes": [
    {
      "action": "drive",
      "summary": "car color changed to blue",
      "unrelated_stuff": 123
    }
  ]
}

Since full=true, Config DB will extract the config and changes from the scraped JSON config. So, the actual config will simply be

{
  "meta": "this is the actual config that'll be stored."
}

and the following new config change would be registered for that particular config item

{
  "action": "drive",
  "summary": "car color changed to blue",
  "unrelated_stuff": 123
}