Immutable/default action parameters for aliases (ChatOps)

There is already mechanism to set optional parameter in alias:

formats:
  - "google {{query=StackStorm}}"

Problem

But what if we want to add simple hardcoded chatops command and hide unneeded logic behind the default/immutable action parameters? I think that good ChatOps commands could be simple and easy to remember, without MANY optional parameters. Example case:

To do that, we need to create additional action with default parameters, which will trigger another action. I do this way almost everywhere (bad way): https://github.com/armab/st2-chatops-aliases/tree/master/actions

Proposal

The proposal is to allow setting from alias default/immutable action parameters.

Here is an example how it could look:

---
name: chatops.deploy
action_ref: packs.install
description: Deploy ChatOps pack from `armab/st2-ansible-chatops` GitHub repo
formats:
  - "deploy chatops"
# these lines were added
# naming/structure is doubtful, but you got the idea
action_parameters:
  packs: "st2-ansible-chatops"
  repo_url: "armab/st2-ansible-chatops"

Here you can see that behind simple and immutable/hardcoded ChatOps command:

!deploy chatops

stands:

st2 run packs.install packs=st2-ansible-chatops repo_url=armab/st2-ansible-chatops

---

This simplifies things a lot, making existing actions more reusable by aliases.

[namachieli]

Hi,

I have a similar use case.

I have an action alias I would like to be able have users call, that uses the same parameter values.

The proposed “action-parameters” would solve my use case perfectly.

action_ref: "servicenow.get"
description: "list unassigned Tickets in the Network team's Queue"
formats:
  - display: "list unassigned servicenow"
    representation:
    - "(unassigned|network|network team|networking|ticket|tickets).*(servicenow|service now|service-now|tickets)"
action-parameters:
  query: {\"active:\"true\",\"assignment_group\":\"aebf964c4f8a3e00c92a2cee0210c734\"\"assigned_to\":\"^state!=6^EQ\"
  table: "incident"

[nicholasamorim]

Same use case here, pretty much:

When using chatops, I started defining certain action aliases. One alias I set up was basically deploy app, that in turn would trigger an ansible-playbook action with certain parameters.

Those parameters are static (playbook X, folder Y) and shouldn’t be changed with user input.

I was then surprised to find that action aliases do not support default/static parameters. You can define in the format such as deploy web {{playbook="someplay"}} but there are valid use-cases for simply having static parameters being passed to the action. Having a default in the format looks like a workaround for the time being but that’s all that it is.

I think Action Aliases could benefit from something like action_parameters where we define certain parameters to be passed to the action that do not depend on user input and should not be changed.