Edit text-based Resource Elements On-The-Go [CB10103]

TL:DR Idea is to update Resource elements from vRO itself as no such functionality exists in UI yet. Use the package and workflow to update resource elements directly from vRO quickly and conveniently. Link to vRO package here.

Introduction

We all use Resource Elements inside vRealize Orchestrator for various reasons. Resource Elements are external independent objects that once imported, can be used in vRO Workflows and scripts.

Resource elements include image files, scripts, XML templates, HTML files, and so on. However, I have one concern regarding updating them. It is such an overhead. Though, on official vRO Docs, it is clearly mentioned that you can import, export, restore, update, and delete a resource element, in reality, you have to update that object using a external editor that means a text editor for text based files, image editor for images etc.

Apart from images, the most common type of resource elements are text based files for example, .sh, .ps1, .json, .xml, .html, .yaml etc. In this post, to ease the process of updating resource elements, I have created a WF using which you really won’t have to follow that long boring method of exporting a resource element, edit it in the Notepad++, import it back. Just run that WF and select your resource element and it will give you a text editing area where you can update your resource element on-the-go.

Prerequisites

Download the package from here and import into your vRO.
Make sure you have the resource element you want to update.

Procedure

Run the Workflow Edit Resource Element On-The-Go and select the resource element. Here, I’ve selected template.yaml which I already imported in vRO earlier.

By default, vRO picks up a MIME type for your file. However, for text based objects, you can set it to text/{fileExtension}. Here, I will set it to text/yaml so that I can see its content directly in vRO.

Go to the next section of the workflow and you can see the current content of your resource element. Edit it the way you like. Here, this file was empty, so I added this YAML code.

Click Run and wait for workflow to complete.

Go back to the resource element to check if the content is there.

Now, you want to change the flavor from large to small. Rerun the workflow, edit the flavor value. Click Run.

Your changes should be visible now.

Scope of Improvement

I am looking for a way to give the version as an input, so that we can update the version of the resource element as we update its content. Seems like the resourceElement.version attributes is not working at least in vRO 8.x. Suggestions would be appreciated.