Salt State Rendering: Can I See the Output of the Jinja Phase? - salt-stack

Question

Question:
Is there any way to see the output of the Jinja phase, before attempting to parse as YAML?
Background:
I was trying to debug a Salt problem where I was getting this error:
local:
Data failed to compile:
----------
Rendering SLS ':test.sls' failed: mapping values are not allowed in this context
Not very helpful: No line number? What's a 'mapping value'? etc.
The problem boiled down to something like this:
{%- for x in [1, 2] -%}
Test {{ x }}:
cmd.run:
- name: echo Test {{ x }}
{%- endfor -%}
A seasoned Salt person will recognize that I've messed up the whitespace so that the Jinja was producing the output below:
Test 1:
cmd.run:
- name: echo Test 1 Test 2:
cmd.run:
- name: echo Test 2
However, this was frustrating to find in a complex set of states with no information on where the problem was occurring and no clear description of what the problem even was.
In the process of debugging this I learned that you can get the YAML tree using slsutil.renderer, like this:
% salt-call --local slsutil.renderer `pwd`/test.sls 'jinja'
local:
----------
Test 1:
----------
cmd.run:
|_
----------
name:
echo Test 1
Test 2:
----------
cmd.run:
|_
----------
name:
echo Test 2
But this of course requires that the YAML is valid. So how can I get Salt to output the templates as in my third snippet above, AFTER the Jinja has been evaluated but BEFORE Salt tries to parse it as YAML?

Answer 1

Oh wow, as I revisit this I've learned something new. I believe the answer is cp.get_template.
Test file:
% cat test.sls
{%- for x in [1, 2] -%}
Test {{ x }}:
cmd.run:
- name: echo Test {{ x }}
{%- endfor -%}
Now cp.get_template renders the Jinja and shows the raw output:
% salt-call --local cp.get_template `pwd`/test.sls /dev/stdout
Test 1:
cmd.run:
- name: echo Test 1Test 2:
cmd.run:
- name: echo Test 2
local:
/dev/stdout