Convert Azure desired state configs (DSC) powershell scripts to JSON or YAML

Question

Convert Azure desired state configs (DSC) PowerShell scripts to JSON or YAML

Is there a way to do convert DSC .ps files to json or yaml.

I am trying to covert DSC first to python but that is also not direct possible.

Please suggest

Answer 1

Converting Desired State Configuration (DSC) PowerShell scripts directly to JSON or YAML is not a straightforward automated process because DSC scripts and JSON/YAML serve different purposes. DSC scripts define the desired state of a system using a specific PowerShell syntax, while JSON and YAML are data serialization formats. However, you can manually create JSON or YAML representations of the configuration data defined within a DSC script. This process involves interpreting the configuration elements within the DSC script and representing them in JSON or YAML format.

For example- First, you need a DSC configuration defined in a .ps1 file.

Configuration MyWebServer {
    Import-DscResource -ModuleName 'PSDesiredStateConfiguration'
    Node localhost {
        WindowsFeature IIS {
            Ensure = "Present"
            Name   = "Web-Server"
        }
    }
}

Write-Host "MyWebServer configuration has been loaded."

Run the configuration script to generate a .mof file. This .mof file represents the desired state in a standardized format that DSC can understand.

To convert the DSC configuration to JSON, you need to extract the configuration data. However, DSC configurations do not natively support exporting directly to JSON or YAML. As a workaround, you could define the configuration data as a hashtable and export it to JSON.

Let's assume we've modeled our DSC configuration data like so:

#ConfigurationData.ps1
$ConfigurationData = @{
    AllNodes = @(
        @{
            NodeName                    = 'localhost'
            PSDscAllowPlainTextPassword = $true
            PSDscAllowDomainUser        = $true
        }
    )
    WindowsFeature_IIS = @{
        Ensure = 'Present'
        Name   = 'Web-Server'
    }
}


#Convert the configuration data to JSON
$json = $ConfigurationData | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 5

#Save the JSON

Now, convert this hashtable to JSON using the ConvertTo-Json cmdlet in PowerShell. This will create a MyDscConfiguration.json file with your configuration data.

Now if you further want to convert this json to yaml then PowerShell does not have a built-in cmdlet to convert JSON to YAML, but you can install a third-party module called powershell-yaml to accomplish this.

After you've installed the powershell-yaml module, the next steps are to import the module, convert the JSON content to YAML, and save it. Run the below commands , just modify the path as per your own

# Import the powershell-yaml module
Import-Module powershell-yaml

# Path to the JSON file
$jsonFilePath = "C:\Users\arko\Downloads\MyDscConfiguration.json"

# Read the JSON file content
$jsonContent = Get-Content -Path $jsonFilePath -Raw

# Convert the JSON content to a PowerShell object
$object = ConvertFrom-Json -InputObject $jsonContent

# Convert the PowerShell object to YAML
$yaml = $object | ConvertTo-Yaml

# Path to the YAML file
$yamlFilePath = "C:\Users\arko\Downloads\MyDscConfiguration.yaml"

# Save the YAML content to a file
$yaml | Out-File -FilePath $yamlFilePath

you will end up with a MyDscConfiguration.yaml file in your directory wherever you have given the path.