Can Puppet File Source be from a web service?

Question

Is there a (simple) way to have puppet use a file available on the internet for the Source property of a File?

eg:

file { "/home/text.txt":
  source => [
    "http://www.example.com/text.txt",
  ]
}

Answer 1

I'm writing an updated answer to notify future readers that now the File resource indeed implements the HTTP source.

From the docs:

source

A source file, which will be copied into place on the local system. This attribute is mutually exclusive with content and target. Allowed values are:

• puppet: URIs, which point to files in modules or Puppet file server mount points.
  
• Fully qualified paths to locally available files (including files on NFS shares or Windows mapped drives).
  
• file: URIs, which behave the same as local file paths.
  
• http: URIs, which point to files served by common web servers

So you can use the construct as you wrote it:

file { "/home/text.txt":
  source => "http://www.example.com/text.txt",
}

Answer 2

It's been requested as a feature for years... But you'd end up needing a custom function for this... or to use curl or wget. See Puppet Forge.

What's in text.txt?

Answer 3

It's not possible out of the box right now:

source:

...

The available URI schemes are puppet and file. Puppet URIs will retrieve files from Puppet’s built-in file server

I ended up using define I found on the internet:

define remote_file($remote_location=undef, $mode='0644'){
  exec{ "retrieve_${title}":
    command => "/usr/bin/wget -q ${remote_location} -O ${title}",
    creates => $title,
  }

  file{$title:
    mode    => $mode,
    require => Exec["retrieve_${title}"],
  }
}

remote_file{'/home/text.txt':
  remote_location => 'http://www.example.com/text.txt'
}