Salt State Rendering: Can I See the Output of the Jinja Phase?

Question:

Is there any way to see the output of the Jinja phase, before attempting to parse as YAML?

Background:

I was trying to debug a Salt problem where I was getting this error:

local:
Data failed to compile:
----------
Rendering SLS ':test.sls' failed: mapping values are not allowed in this context

Not very helpful: No line number? What's a 'mapping value'? etc.

The problem boiled down to something like this:

{%- for x in [1, 2] -%}
Test {{ x }}:
  cmd.run:
    - name: echo Test {{ x }}
{%- endfor -%}

A seasoned Salt person will recognize that I've messed up the whitespace so that the Jinja was producing the output below:

Test 1:
  cmd.run:
    - name: echo Test 1 Test 2:
  cmd.run:
    - name: echo Test 2

However, this was frustrating to find in a complex set of states with no information on where the problem was occurring and no clear description of what the problem even was.

In the process of debugging this I learned that you can get the YAML tree using slsutil.renderer, like this:

% salt-call --local slsutil.renderer `pwd`/test.sls 'jinja'

local:
    ----------
    Test 1:
        ----------
        cmd.run:
            |_
              ----------
              name:
                  echo Test 1
    Test 2:
        ----------
        cmd.run:
            |_
              ----------
              name:
                  echo Test 2

But this of course requires that the YAML is valid. So how can I get Salt to output the templates as in my third snippet above, AFTER the Jinja has been evaluated but BEFORE Salt tries to parse it as YAML?

Solution

Oh wow, as I revisit this I've learned something new. I believe the answer is cp.get_template.

Test file:

% cat test.sls

{%- for x in [1, 2] -%}
Test {{ x }}:
  cmd.run:
    - name: echo Test {{ x }}
{%- endfor -%}

Now cp.get_template renders the Jinja and shows the raw output:

% salt-call --local cp.get_template `pwd`/test.sls /dev/stdout

Test 1:
  cmd.run:
    - name: echo Test 1Test 2:
  cmd.run:
    - name: echo Test 2
local:
    /dev/stdout