Question

How to make create droplet idemoptent?

Posted on September 4, 2023
DigitalOcean Droplets
Asked by Michael Pope

Is there a built-in method to make droplet creation idempotent? For example, if you run this command to create a droplet twice…

curl -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN" \
  -d '{"name":"example.com","region":"nyc3","size":"s-1vcpu-1gb","image":"ubuntu-20-04-x64","ssh_keys":[289794,"3b:16:e4:bf:8b:00:8b:b8:59:8c:a9:d3:f0:19:fa:45"],"backups":true,"ipv6":true,"monitoring":true,"tags":["env:prod","web"],"user_data":"#cloud-config\nruncmd:\n  - touch /test.txt\n","vpc_uuid":"760e09ef-dc84-11e8-981e-3cfdfeaae000"}' \
  "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/droplets"

…two droplets will be created. Is there an option to run the command twice, and prevent a second droplet from being created?

If the answer is yes, how does one accomplish this? If the answer is no, is there a recommended approach to implement droplet uniqueness?

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• September 4, 2023

Accepted Answer

Hey @amorphid,

I believe that this is not available as of the time being via the DigitalOcean API.

The best thing to do to get your voice heard regarding this would be to head over to our Product Ideas board and post a new idea, including as much information as possible for what you’d like to see implemented.

https://ideas.digitalocean.com/

But in the meantime, what you could do is to use the ‘List All Droplets’ API endpoint and check if a Droplet with the specific name already exists.

Here is a quick script as an example:

#!/bin/bash

# Your Droplet name:
DROPLET_NAME="example.com"

# Fetch the list of Droplets
DROPLETS=$(curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN" "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/droplets?per_page=200")

# Check if the Droplet with the desired name already exists
DROPLET_EXISTS=$(echo $DROPLETS | jq ".droplets[] | select(.name == \"$DROPLET_NAME\")")

# Only create the droplet if it doesn't exist
if [ -z "$DROPLET_EXISTS" ]; then
    # Your curl command to create the droplet
else
    echo "Droplet with name $DROPLET_NAME already exists."
fi