Parse/Edit Apache conf files with Ruby?

Question

I need to write some scripts to make changes to Apache conf files, namely to add/update VirtualHosts. I plan on doing this in Ruby. before I write my own, are there any scripts/rubygems which allow Ruby to parse/modify Apache conf files, specifically <VirtualHost> directives?

Answer 1

I ended up just writing my own ruby script... Not very well done, but in case anyone needs it, here's the guts of it. It is looking for the contents of the <VirtualHost></VirtualHost> tag so that it can create a second <VirtualHost> with a ServerName which is a subdomain of our wildcard SSL cert...

begin
  logMsg "Updating apache config file for user #{user} (#{domain_httpd_conf})"

  domain_httpd_conf_io = File.open(domain_httpd_conf,File::RDONLY)

  ip_addr = ''
  main_vhost_config = []
  ssl_vhost_config = ["  ServerName #{auto_ssl_domain}",'  Include "conf/wildcard-ssl.conf"']

  indent = 1

  while line = domain_httpd_conf_io.gets

    line_indented = '  '*indent+line.strip

    if line =~ /^[[:space:]]*<VirtualHost ([0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+)(:[0-9]+)[^>]*>/
      ip = $1
    elsif line =~ /^[[:space:]]*<\/VirtualHost>/
      break 2
    elsif line =~ /^[[:space:]]*(ServerAlias|ServerName).*/
      main_vhost_config.push line_indented
    else

      if line =~ /^[[:space:]]*<[^\/]/
        indent += 1
      elsif line =~ /^[[:space:]]*<[\/]/
        indent = [1, indent-1].max
        line_indented = '  '*indent + line.strip
      end

      main_vhost_config.push line_indented
      ssl_vhost_config.push line_indented
    end
  end

  main_vhost_config.push "  Include #{extraconf_dir}/*.conf"

  domain_httpd_conf_io.close
  domain_httpd_conf_io = File.open(domain_httpd_conf,File::WRONLY||File::TRUNC)

  domain_httpd_conf_io.puts "<VirtualHost #{ip}:80 #{ip}:8080>"
  domain_httpd_conf_io.puts main_vhost_config
  domain_httpd_conf_io.puts "</VirtualHost>"

  domain_httpd_conf_io.puts

  domain_httpd_conf_io.puts "<VirtualHost #{ip}:443 #{ip}:8888>"
  domain_httpd_conf_io.puts ssl_vhost_config
  domain_httpd_conf_io.puts "</VirtualHost>"

rescue SystemCallError => err
  logErr "ERROR: Unexpected error: "+err

  domain_httpd_conf_io.close
end

Still has some bugs to work out but it mostly does what I want.

Answer 2

No clue, but one thing that may help you is apache's support for mass virtual hosting: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/mass.html

If you can enforce consistency across your vhosts then maybe you don't need ruby to create/manage/edit them. Convention over configuration is the rails way right?