Mapping data to Cloud Cruiser

JSON feed configuration

A JSON feed is any text containing data objects in JSON format. Each top-level object in the input file is mapped to an output CC Record. JSON data is mapped using one or more OutputField beans that refer to fields in the data. A dot notation can be used when naming JSON fields since the data structure is hierarchical. For example, given input of {"usage": {"vmname": "abc", "compute": 1.0 }} , the compute resource can be referenced as input usage.compute .

Mixed format

JSON data can be mixed with plain text. As long as there are line ends in the file, plain text can be mapped into same output record as JSON data found in the same line. This is done by defining an InputField to describe a portion of the text with either a regular expression or a start and end position. This input field's name can then be referred to by an OutputField.

Recursive processing

The parent output record is cloned and resources dropped before processing each child node. The hierarchical nature of the syntax is supported by the JsonPathOutputMapping class which is recursive and supports nesting expressions and mappings. In this way, identifiers can be accumulated for the context of a node containing usage data for one or more resources.

Variables

Input can be mapped to a mutable variable instead of an output field. These variables can then be specified in place of a literal input field where necessary. To specify a variable as input, set the input name to #  followed by the variable name.

Mapping output

Outputs correspond to a CC Record field and typically name an attribute as the input. Input names can employ a dot notation to pull nested values. This is convenient in many cases, but limited to the first match and not intended to satisfy recursive processing needs. For example, customer.name as an input would pull the value of a name attribute contained in a customer object in the current node. When using JSONPath expressions to match nodes, the input names are relative to the matching nodes.

You can map lists of objects and lists of intrinsics using * to specify retrieving every instance of a given object or intrinsic. See the example with list in this article.

For general information about JSONPath expressions, see http://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/.

Basic example

{
  "customer" : {
    "name" : "ABC Corp"
  },
  "service" : {
    "vmName" : "9283479",
    "compute" : {
      "osType" : "Windows 2008 R2",
      "ramGB" : 4,
      "cpuCount" : 2
    },
    "disks" : [ {
      "name" : "Disk‐1",
      "sizeGB" : 400
    },
    {
      "name" : "Disk‐2",
      "sizeGB" : 2000
    } ]
  }
}

Output

The following CSV, with dates and times omitted to save space, represents typical output from mapping the above data sample as prescribed.

,,,,3,customer,ABC Corp,vmName,9283479,osType,Windows 2008 R2,2,ramGB,4,cpuCount,2
,,,,3,customer,ABC Corp,vmName,9283479,diskName,Disk-1,1,diskGB,400
,,,,3,customer,ABC Corp,vmName,9283479,diskName,Disk-2,1,diskGB,2000