How to bootstrap prepared queries

[johntdyer]

I would like to bootstrap a cluster to "start" with some prepared queries but the docs only show adding them via the rest API. Is there a way to pre-seed them ? Is there also a way to back them up ?

[johntdyer]

Any chance anyone has an idea on this ?

[slackpad]

Hi @johntdyer similar to K/V, prepared queries belong to the cluster and not any individual agent, so they cannot be configured as part of an agent's config file. If you wanted to pre-seed them you'd need to script that outside of Consul with something like curl or using one of the Consul API clients. We have future plans for a better backup system on #1254, which would include prepared queries. Most existing backup solutions only persist K/V, so at present the best way to back up your query definitions would be to save off a GET to /v1/query using a management token which will enumerate all defined queries in one request.

[johntdyer]

Are queries idempotent ? Could I run a check looking for a missing query and then readd it incase it somehow ended up "mIssing"?

[slackpad]

You could run a check and add a missing query, but it's a little tricky because you can't control the ID when you create a query. I'm assuming you are giving your queries a Name in which case the first attempt to create a query with that name will go through and subsequent ones will fail.

Not sure if you are creating queries for a bunch of different services, but perhaps prepared query templates might help you here by defining a single query with a pattern that applies to multiple services; this is new for 0.6.4.

[slackpad]

See #717 (comment) for a possible implementation idea for this.

[pearkes]

Just wanted to drop a note for future readers that the Consul Terraform Provider supports a prepared_query resource that can potentially provide a nice workflow to bootstrap and manage prepared queries, but isn't a direct solution for this ask.