Using search to find data bag items

You might want to execute code in your recipe multiple times – once for each data bag item, such as for each user or each HTTP endpoint.

You can use search to find certain data bag items and loop through the search results to execute code multiple times.

Let's see how we can make our recipes more dynamic by searching for data bag items.

Getting ready

Follow the Getting ready and How to do it... (steps 1 to 4) sections in the Using data bags recipe in this chapter. You might want to add a few more HTTP endpoints to your data bag.

How to do it...

Let's create a recipe to search for data bag items and call the http_request resource for each one:

1. Edit the default recipe of my_cookbook to retrieve all HTTP hooks from your data bag, which should be called by your recipe:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ subl   cookbooks/my_cookbook/recipes/default.rb
   search(:hooks, '*:*').each do |hook|
     http_request 'callback' do
       url hook['url']
     end
   end
   

2. Upload your modified recipe...