Puppet users - Oct 2013 - best practices for reusing ruby functions across custom providers

Hello puppet users,

I have recently started dabbling in custom types and providers in order to 
solve some problems at work. I now find myself needing to have 2 custom 
providers that leverage a common function to fetch data from a web service 
and I very much do not want to have 2 copies of this function in my code 
base. I''d like to hear how others have addressed this kind of problem,
and
I''m certainly amenable to alternatives if there''s a better way
than the
types/providers.

Here is what I''m trying to do and the constraints I cannot currently
get
around.

1) I am dynamically configuring nginx virtual hosts and adding lines to 
/etc/hosts for internal routing (cloud hosted boxes all have external
ip''s
and I need the various names we support to resolve to internal ip''s of
the
load balancer)

2) The data I need for this configuration (fqdn''s, certs, and keys)
cannot
be determined on the puppet master because the data source is a web service 
(delivers a json array) I install and configure and must be running on the 
node before I can query it.

I already have the custom nginx provider written and working to configure 
the virtual hosts, but I also need the fqdn''s available from the same
web
service and I would like to reuse the function that fetches and parses the 
json from the web service.  This second custom provider will be responsible 
for adding the appropriate lines to /etc/hosts to handle my internal 
routing problem.

Questions:

1) Is there a good way to have an arbitrary ruby module and function that I 
can require in both of my providers? I''m reasonably good with ruby, but
we''re not a ruby shop and I''d rather not have to get into
packaging and
managing gems for the purpose of sharing a 20 line function in 2 places.

2) Is there a way for custom providers to return data to a manifest?
I''d
rather use the file_line resource to handle my /etc/hosts needs, but I 
don''t know of a means of returning data from a resource declaration
(which
would be my existing custom type using the nginx provider) that I could use 
in another resource.

3) Is there a way I can pass arguments to an executable fact? I don''t
know
of one, but I suppose I could set environments variables (i.e. things like 
the web service host, port, user, password, etc...) provided that 
executable facts run each time they are referenced in a manifest?

Thanks for any input.

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