Using a variable inside a Chef recipe

Question

I\'m using chef-cookbook-hostname cookbook to setup node\'s hostname. I don\'t want my hostname to be hard coded in the attribute file (default[\'set_fqdn\']).

In

Answer 1

I found this in the Chef docs. I ran into a similar issue. I am going to try the node.run_state. This information is found at the bottom of this page https://docs.chef.io/recipes.html

Use node.run_state to stash transient data during a chef-client run. This data may be passed between resources, and then evaluated during the execution phase. run_state is an empty Hash that is always discarded at the end of the chef-client run.

For example, the following recipe will install the Apache web server, randomly choose PHP or Perl as the scripting language, and then install that scripting language:

package "httpd" do
  action :install
end

ruby_block "randomly_choose_language" do
  block do
    if Random.rand > 0.5
      node.run_state['scripting_language'] = 'php'
    else
      node.run_state['scripting_language'] = 'perl'
    end
  end
end

package "scripting_language" do
  package_name lazy { node.run_state['scripting_language'] }
  action :install
end