Changing hash value doesnt work

Question

My hash is as follow:

$hash = {
  'somekey' => {
     online => true,
     date   => today
  }
}

I do some random check to change the value of the online key. If something's offline, I want to change the value to offline.

I tried the following code:

$::hash[somekey][online] = false

but that doesn't seem to work. Is there any way I can change the value of online? :(

Answer 1

If at all possible, restructure your manifest.

In most programming languages, you will use constructs like

$variable = default-value
if ( condition ) {
    $variable = another-value
}

The following structure lends itself much better to Puppet's programming paradigm, however.

if ( condition ) {
    $variable = another-value
}
else {
    $variable = default-value
}

As for complexer hashes, you might get away with selector expressions.

$hash = {
  'somekey' => {
    'status' => $condition ? {
      'special-case' => 'offline',
      default        => 'online',
    'date'   => 'today'
  }
}

It's either that, or storing the dynamic value in a variable that is used in the declaration of the hash value.