Call state module from within state module

Question

I'm writing a custom state module with the purpose of creating a file in a given location with (partly) configurable content.

Basically I'm looking to shorten the following SLS (simplified for the purpose of this question, more complex in reality)...

/etc/foo/bar:
  file.managed:
    - contents: Hello World

...to this:

bar:
  my_module.foo:
    - message: World

Since this functionality is basically a more specialized version of the file.managed state, it would be useful for me to re-use the file.managed state in my custom state module.

Is there any way to call the file.managed state module from my own state module?

---

What I've tried already (unsuccesfully):

1. Importing salt.states.file and calling salt.states.file.managed:

   import salt.states.file
   
   def foo(name, message, **kwargs):
       return salt.states.file.managed(name='/etc/foo/%s' % name,
                                       contents='Hello %s' % message, 
                                       **kwargs)
   

   This results in an error message:

     File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/state.py", line 1626, in call
       **cdata['kwargs'])
     File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/loader.py", line 1492, in wrapper
       return f(*args, **kwargs)
     File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/states/my_module.py", line 14, in static_pod
       contents=yaml.dump(data, default_flow_style=False), **kwargs)
     File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/states/file.py", line 1499, in managed
       mode = __salt__['config.manage_mode'](mode)
   NameError: global name '__salt__' is not defined
   

2. Using __salt__['file.managed']:

   def foo(name, message, **kwargs):
       return __salt__['file.managed'](name='/etc/foo/%s' % name,
                                       contents='Hello %s' % message, 
                                       **kwargs)
   

   Which also results in a (different) error message (which is unsurprising, as the documentation explicitly states that __salt__ only contains execution modules, and not state modules):

     File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/state.py", line 1626, in call
       **cdata['kwargs'])
     File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/loader.py", line 1492, in wrapper
       return f(*args, **kwargs)
     File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/states/my_module.py", line 13, in static_pod
       return __salt__['file.managed'](name='/etc/foo/%s' % name,
     File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/loader.py", line 900, in __getitem__
       func = super(LazyLoader, self).__getitem__(item)
     File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/utils/lazy.py", line 93, in __getitem__
       raise KeyError(key)
   KeyError: 'file.managed'
   

Answer 1

I found a solution using the state.single execution module:

def foo(name, messsage):
    result = __salt__['state.single'](fun='file.managed',
                                      name='/etc/foo/%s' % name,
                                      contents='Hello %s' % message,
                                      test=__opts__['test'])
    return result.items()[0][1]

---

The state.single module returns a data structure like the following:

{
  'file_|-/etc/foo/bar_|-/etc/foo/bar_|-managed': {
    'comment': 'The file /etc/foo/bar is set to be changed',
    'name': '/etc/foo/bar',
    'start_time': '08:24:45.022518',
    'result': None,
    'duration': 18.019,
    '__run_num__': 0,
    'changes': {'diff': '...'}
  }
}

The inner object (everything under the file_|-/etc/foo/bar_|-/etc/foo/bar_|-managed) is what the file.managed module would return by itself, so you can re-use this value as your custom state's return value.