Parameter Overrides

Overrides

Parameter Overrides were added to the taskcat to solve a couple of common problems. First, many templates share common parameters that are unique to an AWS account, like a KeyPair name or an S3 Bucket, overrides provided a way to store those centrally for all your projects. Second, we didn’t want to add sensitive data (usernames, passwords, tokens) to a git repository. The idea was to store sensitive/unique data outside of a git repository, but still execute a test using this data. To that end, any parameter defined in the global config will take precedence over the same parameter in a project-level config.

Psuedo Parameters

To increase the flexibility of taskcat, we’ve built-in support for psuedo-parameters that are transposed at runtime for actual values.

Following table describes the supported psuedo-parameters.

Psuedo-ParameterExample Value passed to the CloudFormation stackDetails
$[taskcat_autobucket]taskcat-tag-sample-taskcat-project-5fba6597Note: The S3 Bucket is created
$[taskcat_genaz_1]“us-east-1a”Fetches a single Availability Zone within the region being launched in
$[taskcat_genaz_2]“us-east-1a,us-east-1b”Fetches two AvailabilityZones within the region being launched in
$[taskcat_genaz_3]“us-east-1a,us-east-1b,us-east-1c”Fetches three AvailabilityZones within the region being launched in
$[taskcat_genpass_8A]tI8zN3iX8An alphanumberic 8-charater random password. The length is customizable.
$[taskcat_genpass_8S]mA5@cB5!An alphanumberic 8-charater random password. The length is customizable.
$[taskcat_random-string]yysuawpwubvotiqgwjcuGenerates a random string
$[taskcat_random-numbers]56188163597280820763Generates random numbers.
$[taskcat_genuuid]1c2e3483-2c99-45bb-801d-8af68a3b907bGenerates a UUID