Register variable in a loop can't access through with_items

[Michael Mallett]

Hi, I'm an ansible noob, and I'm following this tutorial to use the rax module to spin up and configure rackspace servers

http://nicholaskuechler.com/2015/01/09/build-rackspace-cloud-servers-ansible-virtualenv/#comment-550108

It's great but it's not dynamic, as you can seemingly only add one server to the dynamic inventory. So I altered it to add servers through with_items like so

tasks:

    - name: Rackspace cloud server build request

      local_action:

        module: rax

        credentials: "{{ credentials }}"

        name: "{{ item }}"

        flavor: "{{ flavor }}"

        image: "{{ image }}"

        region: "{{ region }}"

        files: "{{ files }}"

        wait: yes

        state: present

        networks:

          - private

          - public

      with_items:

        - server-app-01

        - server-app-02

      register: rax

But the problem is that I can't access these variables to add them to the dynamic inventory. I tried doing what the documentation said and taking into account the new 'results' key in the object, but nothing I do results in it correctly targeting the object value I want. This, to me, is the most logical attempt I have made for the results array, (which you can a stripped out version of here, these servers no longer exist)

    - name: Add each cloud server to host group

      local_action:

        module: add_host

        hostname: "{{ item.instances.name }}"

        ansible_ssh_host: "{{ item.instances.rax_accessipv4 }}"

        ansible_ssh_user: root

        groupname: deploy

      with_items: rax.results

This one results in 

One or more undefined variables: 'list object' has no attribute 'rax_accessipv4'

I have tried using rax.results.instances and then using item.name etc, but this results in

One or more undefined variables: 'unicode object' has no attribute 'rax_accessipv4'

I've tried too many to list here, for a very long time, but I've obviously got confused with how this is supposed to work, can I get some help please?

[Brian Coca]

try using debug module to see the actual structure of the returned data:

debug: var=rax




--
Brian Coca

[Michael Mallett]

Hi Brian, thanks for the response.

Perhaps I wasn't clear in my answer but I actually posted a pastebin link in my second paragraph that shows the data structure output from debug. I stripped out some sensitive information but it is the same structurally. 

"This, to me, is the most logical attempt I have made for the results array, (which you can a stripped out version of here, these servers no longer exist)"

Fortunately someone on stack overflow read my question and offered a solution. I don't fully understand why it uses an array key tbh, but I will look into that on my own.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29542433/cant-access-register-variable-in-a-loop/29544680#29544680