with_items: two YAML lists

[Edgars]

Hi

As per documentation, with_items supports yaml or vars list:

with_items: somelist

What is syntax if I want to include two lists for with_items?

Thanks

Edgars

[C. Morgan Hamill]

Excerpts from Edgars's message of 2013-10-01 08:08:08 -0400:

> As per documentation, with_items supports yaml or vars list:
>
> with_items: somelist
>
> What is syntax if I want to include two lists for with_items?

'with_items' collapses the first level of lists into one big list:

with_items:
- somelist
- otherlist

This will do what you want, I believe.
--
Morgan Hamill

[Edgars]

It wont.. It will take somelist and otherlist as values for {{ item }} variable. For example, if I do:

user: name={{ item }}

with_items:

 - somelist

 - otherlist

It will create two users: somelist and otherlist

Edgars

[Serge van Ginderachter]

On 1 October 2013 14:31, Edgars <edgars...@gmail.com> wrote:

It wont.. It will take somelist and otherlist as values for {{ item }} variable. For example, if I do:

user: name={{ item }}

with_items:

 - somelist

 - otherlist

It will create two users: somelist and otherlist

​IIRC, with_items will do that for lists defined without variables (unless with_items: variable)

The with_flattened plugin will do what you want, suing multiple testing and variables.

Serge​

[Edgars]

Thanks, with_flattened works.. but where is it documented??

Edgars

otrdiena, 2013. gada 1. oktobris 14:08:08 UTC+2, Edgars rakstīja:

[Nick]

I've found that sometimes neither with_items or with_flattened did what I needed, at least on the face of it.  But since with_items support jinja2 syntax, I noticed there is another way to combine lists.

An example snippet from a working playbook. Given vars define like this:

  apache_vhost:
    id: whatever
    server_name: whatever.com
    server_aliases:
      - list
      - of
      - aliases
    state: present

One can concatenate lists like this (the last line is what I mean):

  - name: Ensure virtual hostname is (un)defined in /etc/hosts
    action: lineinfile
            backup=yes
            dest=/etc/hosts
            regexp="^{{ansible_default_ipv4.address}}.*\s{{item}}"
            line="{{ansible_default_ipv4.address}}    {{item}}"
            state="{{ 'absent' if apache_vhost.state == 'absent' else 'present' }}"
    with_items: apache_vhost.server_aliases + [apache_vhost.server_name]

So in your case you might consider:

  with_items: list1 + list2 + list3


Cheers,

N

[Michael DeHaan]

"I've found that sometimes neither with_items or with_flattened did what I needed, at least on the face of it."

Which is what exactly?

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[Nick]

On 01/10/13 14:31, Michael DeHaan wrote:

"I've found that sometimes neither with_items or with_flattened did what I needed, at least on the face of it."

Which is what exactly?

The example I gave is intended as one such case: I have a list and an item I need to combine into a flattened list.

I can't remember all the detail of what I tried and didn't work for me, however, which is why I was vague.  IIRC, I tried

 with_items:
    - list
    - item

  with_items:
    - list
    - [item]

...and possibly some others more desperate variations involving [{{item}}], [$item] and the like.

However, checking the docs I think I am confusing "with_flattened" for "with_nested" (since the latter is documented and the former is not). So with_flattened in fact probably was not one of the things I tried. 

But the main point I was making was that there is an alternative (Jinja2 expressions) which is implied but explicitly included in the docs.

N

[Michael DeHaan]

  with_items:
    - list
    - [scalar]

Won't work per se because it won't know to replace the bareword inside brackets with a variable

  with_items:
    - list
    - [ "{{scalar}}" ]

Should be fine (untested)

Note that you should not use the name "item" in for a variable as that's the name of the loop index, not sure if that was just illustrative or what :)

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Michael DeHaan <mic...@ansibleworks.com>
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http://www.ansibleworks.com/

[Nick]

On 01/10/13 16:50, Michael DeHaan wrote:

Note that you should not use the name "item" in for a variable as that's the name of the loop index, not sure if that was just illustrative or what :)

Sorry, yes, just bad choice of name for the illustration.

  with_items:
    - list
    - [scalar]

Won't work per se because it won't know to replace the bareword inside brackets with a variable

  with_items:
    - list
    - [ "{{scalar}}" ]

Should be fine (untested)

Which implies we can't do the following then?

  vars:
    elem:
      alpha: one
      beta: two

  tasks:
   ...
       with_items:
         - list
         - [ elem ]


Unless we actually wanted the the final element to be "{ alpha: 'one', beta: 'two'}", of course - which is what "{{ elem }}" would give.


But this would still work:

        with_items: list + [elem]

And with_flattened would work too, I assume.

But what if scalar was a *list* and we wanted to append it as the final item (as here)? The above would still work, but would "with_flattened"?

In other words, would this work:

  vars:
    elem:
      - alpha
      - beta

  tasks:
   ...
       with_flattened:
         - list
         - [ elem ]

Or would "with_flattened" flatten elem as well, giving the same as the following?

       with_items: list + [alpha] + [beta]


Cheers,

N