Access dict key when using with_subelements

[Peter Thorson]

when using with_dict, item.key retrieves the dict key and item.value retrieves the value.

however, when using with_subelements and having the first item being looped over be a dict, item.0 seems to return only the value. Is there a way

concrete example:

vars:
  users:
    bob:
      authorized_keys:
        - "ssh-rsa a..."
        - "ssh-rsa b..."
    alice:
      authorized_keys:
        - "ssh-rsa c..."


tasks:
  - authorized_key: user=??? key="{{ item.1 }}"
    with_subelements:
      - "{{ users }}"
      - authorized_keys

How do I retrieve the username? I understand that I could change users into a list and add username as a property. I want to avoid that because this users list is used for lots of different things where being able to look up information about a user by username is required.

[Slavek Jurkowski]

Hi Peter,

Did you find a solution to this? I'm facing the same issue and it sure sucks!

Thanks

[Peter Thorson]

I have been using a horrible hacky workaround, specifically, adding the key as a field to the dict element:

vars:
  users:
    bob:
      name: bob
      authorized_keys:

        - "ssh-rsa a..."
        - "ssh-rsa b..."
    alice:

      name: alice
      authorized_keys:
        - "ssh-rsa c..."


tasks:
  - authorized_key: user=item.0.name key="{{ item.1 }}"

    with_subelements:
      - "{{ users }}"
      - authorized_keys

This is difficult to maintain because the two names can get out of sync, it is not intuitive at all that making a new user should include the name again when its already used as the key. It is just the least worst solution I've found.

I wish there was a sane, unified, flexible solution to looping in Ansible. As it stands there appear to be a bunch of one-off non-interoperable looping constructs designed for very narrow purposes. This is easily the most frustrating aspect of using Ansible for anything non-trivial.

[Slavek Jurkowski]

Thanks for the reply. i agree..I just converted my dict in the same way..Just wanted to check if there was something better out there that anyone has found :P

Slavek

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[General Luken]

I have workaround for this. You basically have to use "include" as a function. Let's say your {{users}} structure looks like this:

users:
  ssh_keys:
  - somekeyfdsfdsfdsfsdfsdyttytry
  - someotherkeyfdsryekfdlmgdfm

In your main.yml there would be:

- include: ssh_key.yml
           _users_ssh_keys={{item.value.ssh_keys}}
           _users_username={{item.key}}
  with_dict: "{{users}}"

And in ssh_key.yml you would iterate over all ssh keys like this:

---
- name: SSH key is installed
  authorized_key: user="{{_users_username}}" key="{{_ssh_key_item}}"
  loop_control:
    loop_var: _ssh_key_item
  with_items: "{{_users_ssh_keys}}"

I hope it will help someone.