How do I pass parameters to a salt state file?

Question

I want to create a group and user using salt state files, but I do not know the group, gid, user, uid, sshkey until I need to execute the salt state file which I would like to pass in as parameters.

I have read about Pillar to create the variable. How do I create pillars before execution?

/srv/salt/group.sls:

{{ name }}:
  group.present:
    - gid: {{ gid }}
    - system: True

Command line:

salt 'SaltStack-01' state.sls group name=awesome gid=123456

Answer 1

Another nice way to pass (incase you don't want to use pillars Nor create a file as other answers shows) - you can pass a local environment variable to salt and read it from within the sls file, like this:

Command:

MYVAR=world salt 'SaltStack-01' state.sls somesalt   # Note the env variable passed at the beginning

sls file:

# /srv/salt/somesalt.sls

foo:
  cmd.run:
    - name: |
        echo "hello {{ salt['environ.get']('MYVAR') }}"

Will print to stdout:

hello world

Another good thing to know is that the env variable also gets passed on to any included salt states as well.