Hi,

In our environment we're pondering patching Foreman to make the automatic host creation when facts/reports are uploaded optional based on a configuration parameter.

(models/hosts.rb; line 353)

347   def self.importHostAndFacts yaml
348     facts = YAML::load yaml
349     return false unless facts.is_a?(Puppet::Node::Facts)
350 
351     h = Host.find_by_certname facts.name
352     h ||= Host.find_by_name facts.name
353     h ||= Host.new :name => facts.name
[...]

(models/report.rb; line 80)

 73   def self.import(yaml)
 74     report = YAML.load(yaml)
 75     raise "Invalid report" unless report.is_a?(Puppet::Transaction::Report)
 76     logger.info "processing report for #{report.host}" 
 77     begin
 78       host = Host.find_by_certname report.host
 79       host ||= Host.find_by_name report.host
 80       host ||= Host.new :name => report.host
[...]

Foreman is not just a visualization/reporting tool for us, it's sort of a source of truth. Thus, we don't want hosts to be created automatically on Foreman when they chat to the puppet masters. Basically, if the host is not in Foreman it does not exist for us.

The patch is quite simple, but we'd like to discuss what you think about the new feature before submitting a pull request.

Thanks
N