Still in 2.1?: Nested values always cast to string

[Barry Kaplan]

I thought one of the big improvements in 2.x was not blindly casting nested values to strings:

vars:
  a_var_number: 200

tasks:
  - mymodule:
    module_args:
      a_fixed_number: 100
      a_var_number: "{{ a_number }}"
      a_var_number_with_cast: "{{ a_number | int }}"

Inside the module module_args dict gets:

    module = AnsibleModule(

        argument_spec=dict(

                   module_args=dict(required=True, type='raw')

        ),

    )

    args = module.params['module_args']
    is_num_1 = isinstance(args['a_fixed_number'], int)         # True
    is_num_2 = isinstance(args['a_var_number'], int)           # False
    is_num_3 = isinstance(args['a_var_number_with_cast'], int) # False

[Alex Leonhardt]

OOC, can you try single quotes? Just curious if that makes any difference...

./Alex

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[Barry Kaplan]

Single quotes makes no difference.

[Brian Coca]

​The issue fixed was casting in YAML:

varname: 1

not about templating, as YAML only sees a string:

varname "{{1}}"

​

​^ casting to |int in the YAML definition is mostly useless, you need to cast on consumption:

option={{varname|int}}​

----------

Brian Coca

[Barry Kaplan]

So if I understand Brain, that when passing dict (created from yaml) into a module or plugin, the python code must be aware of all the types of all the properties (flat or nested) and do the cast itself.

This is really fine for a module that consumes values itself. But in an example where the dict is just be converted to json and passed on to external service this will be pain. 

Is this something just has-to-be due the internal design constraints, or might the yaml types be ever be retained in the dict passed to modules?