Writing Control Output Templates

Export formats for the steampipe check command are governed by a set of templates based on the golang text/template package. For each output format there is a directory, in ~/.steampipe/check/templates/, that minimally includes a file called output.tmpl. The name of the directory defines the name of an output format. The content of output.tmpl defines how to unpack and format an object, called Data, that's passed to the template.

Example of a simple template

Here is a template that defines a new summary output format.

{{ define "output" }}

{{ range .Data.Root.Groups }}
Summary for {{ .Title }}
{{ end }}
total: {{ .Data.Root.Summary.Status.TotalCount }}
passed: {{ .Data.Root.Summary.Status.PassedCount }}
failed: {{ .Data.Root.Summary.Status.FailedCount }}
skipped: {{ .Data.Root.Summary.Status.Skip }}

{{ end }}

Once installed as ~/.steampipe/check/templates/summary/output.tmpl, this command prints a summary.

cd ~/steampipe-mod-zoom-compliance
steampipe check --output=summary all

Summary for Zoom Compliance

total: 185
passed: 119
failed: 66
skipped: 0

This command puts the above output into the file output.summary.

steampipe check --export=output.summary all

This command produces an inferred filename like all-20220119-111307.summary.

steampipe check --export=summary all

This command produces the fully-qualified name output.asff.json.

steampipe check --export=output.asff.json all

Data available to the template

Steampipe sends an object with a Data field of type controlexecute.ExecutionTree, the structure that represents control hierarchy. Templates typically use fields of structs defined in ControlRun, ResultGroup, ResultRow, and StatusSummary.