Post json data with URI module

[Tony Kinsley]

I am trying to post a variable that gets defined during my playbook as json to a webservice. Unfortunately I have not been able to get the URI module to post valid json. 

    - name: lookup act_transaction in database

      mongo_query: >

        host={{ams_ip}} user=user password={{pass}}

        database=db collection=transactions

        filter='{}' projection='{"_id":True}'

        sort='start_time' direction=-1 limit=1

      register: query

    - name: login to gui

      run_once: yes

      uri:

        url: "https://{{ ip }}/login"

        method: POST

        follow_redirects: all

        body: "username={{amg_username}}&password={{amg_password}}&next=/"

        HEADER_Origin: "https://{{ ams_ip }}"

        HEADER_Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

      register: cookie

    - name: create request body

      set_fact:

        req:

          _id: "{{ query.results[0]._id['$oid'] }}"

          guids: [ "{{ guid }}" ]

    - debug: var=genconfig_req

    - debug: msg="{{ genconfig_req }}"

    - name: generate config

      when: ams_deploy and do_act

      uri: >

        url="https://{{ ams_ip }}/generate_config"

        method=POST

        body="{{ req|to_nice_json }}"

        follow_redirects=all

        HEADER_Origin="https://{{ ams_ip }}"

        HEADER_Content-Type=application/json

        HEADER_Cookie="{{ cookie.set_cookie }}"

 

when this request is made to the webserver, the webserver logs an error for invalid json ( SyntaxError: Unexpected token _ ). I have tried every combination I can think of to escape our the dictionary as a valid json string. I added a debug failure log to the URI module to see what the URI module was seeing.:

        if url == "https://192.168.141.42/generate_config": # so we only fail on the problem task

            module.fail_json(msg = "type = %s, body = %s" %( type( body ), str(body) ))

        resp, content = h.request(url, method=method, body=body, headers=headers)

This logs for me 

failed: [192.168.141.120] => {"failed": true}

msg: type = <type 'str'>, body = {_id: 5504a68130600c6b05691b93, guids: [0021FA000000000002000000000007D1]}

which i think confirms that the module is just not sending valid json, the keys and values should be quoted. I assume the problem has something to do with the order the yaml is processed, the json filter gets applied before the playbook is analyzed, and ansible maybe sees the json data as more yaml so it gets loaded as such. I'm just guessing.

Interesting when I used the yaml format ( body: "{{ req }}" ) I was getting a dictionary instead of a string. I have tried decomposing the variable ( both yaml and inline format ) so:

body='{ "_id": "{{ req._id }}", "guids": [ "{{ guid }}" ] }'

I have tried the filters: string, to_nice_json, and to_json

 About the only thing I haven't tried is writing the variable to a file using the copy module with content="{{ req|to_nice_json }}" and then using a file lookup like the example shows.

Anybody have any ideas?