Single namevar

single_namevar.md

Single Namevar

Every type must have at least one mandatory parameter: the namevar. This parameter will uniquely identify each resource of the type on the target system — for example, the path of a file on disk, the name of a user account, or the name of a package. If the user doesn’t specify a value for the namevar when declaring a resource, its value will default to the title of the resource. There are three ways to designate a namevar. Every type must have exactly one parameter that meets exactly one of these criteria:

Option 1: Create a parameter whose name is :name. Since most types just use :name as the namevar, it gets special treatment and will automatically become the namevar.

    newparam(:name) do
      desc "The name of the database."
    end

Option 2: Provide the :namevar => true option as an additional argument to the newparam call. This allows you to use a namevar with a different, more descriptive name (such as the file type’s path parameter).

    newparam(:path, :namevar => true) do
      ...
    end

Option 3: Call the isnamevar method (which takes no arguments) inside the parameter’s code block. This allows you to use a namevar with a different, more descriptive name. There is no practical difference between this and option 2.

    newparam(:path) do
      isnamevar
      ...
    end