Returners¶

Using Returners¶

All commands will return the command data back to the master. Adding more returners will ensure that the data is also sent to the specified returner interfaces.

Specifying what returners to use is done when the command is invoked:

salt '*' test.ping --return redis_return

This command will ensure that the redis_return returner is used.

It is also possible to specify multiple returners:

salt '*' test.ping --return mongo_return,redis_return,cassandra_return

In this scenario all three returners will be called and the data from the test.ping command will be sent out to the three named returners.

Writing a Returner¶

A returner is a module which contains a returner function, the returner function must accept a single argument. this argument is the return data from the called minion function. So if the minion function test.ping is called the value of the argument will be True.

A simple returner is implemented here:

import redis
import json

def returner(ret):
    '''
    Return information to a redis server
    '''
    # Get a redis connection
    serv = redis.Redis(
                host='redis-serv.example.com',
                port=6379,
                db='0')
    serv.sadd("%(id)s:jobs" % ret, ret['jid'])
    serv.set("%(jid)s:%(id)s" % ret, json.dumps(ret['return']))
    serv.sadd('jobs', ret['jid'])
    serv.sadd(ret['jid'], ret['id'])

This simple example of a returner set to send the data to a redis server serializes the data as json and sets it in redis.

You can place your custom returners in a _returners directory within the file_roots specified by the master config file. These custom returners are distributed when state.highstate is run, or by executing the saltutil.sync_returners or saltutil.sync_all functions.