Allow to pass inline json string for chef-client/chef-solo

I would wonder if there is a use case for this outside of the run_list. If not, perhaps being able to specify a override run_list would be more appropriate.

It'd probably be easier if passing JSON was a different flag than passing a file containing JSON, such as -J and -j, respectively. There is a question of when in the run this JSON would be applied. I would assume it would override all other values.

I'm lowering the priority of this improvement because it is fairly easy to workaround with the creation of a temporary file, and properly escaping JSON on the shell command line is often too difficult to be used.

One of use case can be launching chef-client from cron. So run_list would be the most used option in this inline json, however setting other attributes could be also useful.

I think, that creating another option for inline json (such as -J) would confuse users and also there will be problem with setting priority of attributes passed via json file and inline json, so it's not a good solution.

Escaping json on the shell command line is indeed difficult, but it's still less work to do (with small content or using some tools) than creating temporary file, adding content, and removing it after it's done.

Now, we're using cron (for making backups), that is launching chef-client and json file is taken from simple web server. The problem is, that this task should not be placed in 2 different places (we must to remember about json file all the time).

I suppose that we need absolutely another way.

for example, we can do something like

chef-client add role:monitoring
chef-client add recipe:runit
chef-client run

As a temporary workaround, you could consider something like

$ chef-solo -j <(echo "{\"run_list\":\"recipe[something]\"}"

I am not sure command like option will useful, but specifying json_attribs directly in chef-solo configuration will definitely help to reduce the amount of hassle to bootstrap.

[2012-06-18T19:59:25+03:00] FATAL: I cannot find 
{
    "run_list": [ "recipe[op::default]" ]
}

After review, I don't believe this is a feature we would encourage.

Wojciech, it isn't clear to me how you're managing the run list currently. If the json file is stored on a web server and copied to a host as part of its build out, why not put that run list in a role and add these nodes to that role, and then just manage the node?

If there's an unavoidable reason for having the json run_list predefined, why not have an initial cookbook that updates the node with the most recently run_list from somewhere like a data bag? (I don't really like this, I'm just putting together ideas.)
One use case that has been brought up in the past is a situation where you would hard code the cron job into a disk image so that if a new node was brought up with that disk image it would already be configured, but the same can be done using -j and a first_boot file.

CHEF-2988 added the ability to use a temporary run list with --override-runlist. Which allows you to set a temporary run list for a single run.

The JSON isn't really meant as a human interface. If there's a place where you have to deal with JSON we should fix that and we should discourage situations like this where the user has to jump through escaping hoops to provide JSON using an interface where it is unnatural, like the shell.