How can I access the current node from a library in a Chef cookbook?

Question

I\'m attempting to write a library for a chef cookbook that simplifies some common searches.

For example, I\'d like to be able to do something like this in coo

Answer 1

I just ran into this while trying to access the current environment in a library. I couldn't really figure out how to use modules to get access to the node and I didn't want to pass the node into each method call (or the instantiation call) so I did this (example code.. not the actual functionality):

# libraries/account.rb
class Account
  @@env = "_default"

  def self.env=(env)
    @@env = env
  end

  def settings
    Chef::EncryptedDataBagItem.load(@@env, "settings") || {}
  end
end

# recipes/accounts.rb
Account.env = node.chef_environment

Account.new.settings

I don't know if using class variables is frowned upon, but it works in all my tests and it's nice and easy to use.