This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
---
Title       : 	Chef: include_recipe only_if or not_if
Author      : 	Remy van Elst
Date        : 	06-10-2013
URL         : 	https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Chef_include_recipe_only_if_not_if.html
Format      : 	Markdown/HTML
---



Chef supports including other recipes in cookbooks, for example, I can include
the MySQL recipe from a PHP recipe. However, this is not a normal resource but a
normal method. Therefore it ignores anything passed to it, including only _if or
not_ if. This tutorial shows you how to include or not include a recipe based on
a variable, comparable with not _if or only_ if.

<p class="ad"> <b>Recently I removed all Google Ads from this site due to their invasive tracking, as well as Google Analytics. Please, if you found this content useful, consider a small donation using any of the options below:</b><br><br> <a href="https://leafnode.nl">I'm developing an open source monitoring app called  Leaf Node Monitoring, for windows, linux & android. Go check it out!</a><br><br> <a href="https://github.com/sponsors/RaymiiOrg/">Consider sponsoring me on Github. It means the world to me if you show your appreciation and you'll help pay the server costs.</a><br><br> <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212">You can also sponsor me by getting a Digital Ocean VPS. With this referral link you'll get $100 credit for 60 days. </a><br><br> </p>


Lets say you have a default recipe for all your nodes. It is a simple cookbook
which includes other recipes via `include_recipe`. It sets standard
configuration like users, ssh settings, mail settings and other stuff you want a
server to have.

But what if you want to deploy a mailserver, which has other config than is
included in your default recipe, but do want all the other stuff from the
recipe? Probably you would change your recipe to something like:

    
    
    include_recipe "postfix::server" do
      only_if node["defaults"]["postfix_server"] = true
    end
    

This won't work. As said above, `include_recipe` is not a normal resource (like
`template` or `user`) but a method. Therefore it ignores anything passed to it,
including only _if or not_ if.

The solution is quite simple, it fall back to using normal Ruby.

Note, there probably are more elegant solutions for this, but I find this to
work quite well.

Instead of the above, try adding this to your cookbook:

    
    
    this_node_is_postfix_server = node["defaults"]["postfix_server"] unless node["defaults"]["postfix_server"].nil?
    include_recipe "postfix::server" if this_node_is_postfix_server
    

As you can see, regular Ruby fixes this problem.

   [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212

---

License:
All the text on this website is free as in freedom unless stated otherwise. 
This means you can use it in any way you want, you can copy it, change it 
the way you like and republish it, as long as you release the (modified) 
content under the same license to give others the same freedoms you've got 
and place my name and a link to this site with the article as source.

This site uses Google Analytics for statistics and Google Adwords for 
advertisements. You are tracked and Google knows everything about you. 
Use an adblocker like ublock-origin if you don't want it.

All the code on this website is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license 
unless already licensed under a license which does not allows this form 
of licensing or if another license is stated on that page / in that software:

    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Just to be clear, the information on this website is for meant for educational 
purposes and you use it at your own risk. I do not take responsibility if you 
screw something up. Use common sense, do not 'rm -rf /' as root for example. 
If you have any questions then do not hesitate to contact me.

See https://raymii.org/s/static/About.html for details.