Lookups

What are Lookups?

Lookups are also key-value pairs, similar to Variables, but are often used for slightly different purposes, potentially involving larger sets of data or data where you might want to check for the existence of the key separately from retrieving the actual value. A single Lookup entry in Vault (identified by its ID) can contain multiple internal key-value pairs.

• Key (ID/Name): A unique identifier for the entire lookup entry in Vault (e.g., customer-tier-config, region-mapping-europe).

• Value: The data associated with the lookup ID. This might be a larger block of text, a JSON structure, or other configuration data.

The distinction often lies in how the data is accessed and its potential size or complexity compared to a simple Variable. The system allows retrieving specific parts of the lookup data using an internal key.

Lookups only support CSV Files for now.

Single maximum of 10Mb.

When to Use Lookups?

Use Lookups for storing:

• Configuration blocks (e.g., a CSV object defining settings for a specific feature).

• Mapping tables (e.g., mapping user IDs to subscription tiers).

• Larger text-based configuration files or scripts where you need to extract specific parts.

• Data where you frequently need to know if an entry exists before deciding whether to fetch its (potentially large) value.

Lookups provide flexibility for managing structured or larger configuration data tied to a specific key, and like Variables and Certificates, their values can be integrated into code rules.

Using Lookups

You can retrieve a specific value from within a Lookup entry stored in Vault using the ascent.lookups.get() function. You need the ID of the Lookup entry and the specific internal key whose value you want.

1. Retrieve Value from Lookup

Call ascent.lookups.get() with the Lookup ID and the internal key.

// Assume 'region-mapping-europe' is the ID of a Lookup entry in Vault
// Assume this Lookup contains internal keys like 'UK', 'DE', 'FR' with corresponding values

// Get the value associated with the internal key 'DE' from the 'region-mapping-europe' lookup
const germanyRegionCode = ascent.lookups.get("region-mapping-europe", "DE");

// germanyRegionCode now holds the value associated with 'DE' within that lookup
console.log(germanyRegionCode); // Example output might be "eu-central-1" or similar