Details
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Bug
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Status: Resolved
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Minor
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Resolution: Fixed
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0.9.0
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None
Description
When adding the item below to the catalog, I get surprising behaviour when retrieving the "test.myconf" parameter at different levels.
When inside a child entity, trying to do $brooklyn:config("test.myconf"), it returns null. But if I do $brooklyn:root().config("test.myconf") then it works as I'd expect (i.e. I get the default value).
brooklyn.catalog:
id: my-example
version: 1.2.3
item:
brooklyn.parameters:
- name: test.myconf
type: string
default: myval
services:
- type: org.apache.brooklyn.entity.stock.BasicApplication
brooklyn.config:
myconf2: $brooklyn:config("test.myconf")
myconf2.from.root: $brooklyn:root().config("test.myconf")
brooklyn.children:
- type: org.apache.brooklyn.entity.stock.BasicEntity
brooklyn.config:
myconf3: $brooklyn:config("test.myconf")
myconf3.from.root: $brooklyn:root().config("test.myconf")
The reason, I believe, is that $brooklyn:config("test.myconf") on the child will lookup the child's explicitly defined config keys and not find any. It will therefore create a new ConfigKey object with no default value. It looks up its own config and then the inherited config, but sees no explicit value set. So it falls back to the configKey.defaultValue. But because we synthesised a new config key object, we don't get the default value that was defined in the brooklyn.parameters section.
—
Overall, I think it's best if:
- our exemplar blueprints use things like $brooklyn:root().config("test.myconf") (because that has a very clear meaning);
- and we change our config key lookup so that we only synthesis a config key object if none of the current entity or any of its ancestors in the parent hierarchy has a matching config key.
For point (2), this could lead to surprising behaviour in edge cases where a hierarchy of entities includes something pulled in from another entity type in the catalog, and where that entity type happens to declare a config key by the same name with a default value. At that point, the user looking at their own yaml file might be surprised that it didn't pick up the default value they are looking at in front of them.
