Can't access registered variable

[Cann]

Hello Everyone

I have been using Ansible for about a year now and I can't wrap my head around on idea of "registered variables"

I bought books, read online docs and looked at examples... but I still can't use this important future properly.

Let me give you a example:

I want to find files that are older than 7 days:

- name: Find backups that are older than 7 days

  find: paths="/db-backups" age="7d"

  register: list_of_db_backups

and I want to delete the files that I have found:

- name: Cleanup backups that are older than 7 days

  file:

    name: "{{ item.path }}"

    state: absent

  with_items: list_of_db_backups.files

and I get error right away saying that "the field 'args' has an invalid value, which appears to include a variable that is undefined. The error was: 'ansible.vars.unsafe_proxy.AnsibleUnsafeText object' has no attribute 'path'"

To be able to understand why ansible says object has no attribute "path", I add a debug line to my playbook:

- debug: var=list_of_db_backups

and I get this result:

TASK [ServerSetup/dev-mysql : debug] *******************************************

ok: [db] => {

    "changed": false, 

    "list_of_db_backups": {

        "changed": false, 

        "examined": 9, 

        "files": [

            {

                "atime": 1493059112.0, 

                "ctime": 1493059112.0, 

                "dev": 28, 

                "gid": 1000, 

                "inode": 136, 

                "isblk": false, 

                "ischr": false, 

                "isdir": false, 

                "isfifo": false, 

                "isgid": false, 

                "islnk": false, 

                "isreg": true, 

                "issock": false, 

                "isuid": false, 

                "mode": "0644", 

                "mtime": 1493059112.0, 

                "nlink": 1, 

                "path": "/db-backups/dev-2017-04-24T18:38:30Z.sql", 

                "rgrp": true, 

                "roth": true, 

                "rusr": true, 

                "size": 397954, 

                "uid": 1000, 

                "wgrp": false, 

                "woth": false, 

                "wusr": true, 

                "xgrp": false, 

                "xoth": false, 

                "xusr": false

            }

        ], 

        "matched": 1, 

        "msg": ""

    }

}

so clearly there is a variable named "path"

What am I doing wrong here? Can someone please clarify? 

This is really important for me to take my ansible skills to the next level.

thank you kindly.

[Kai Stian Olstad]

On 24. april 2017 21:46, Cann wrote:
> Hello Everyone
>
> I have been using Ansible for about a year now and I can't wrap my head
> around on idea of "registered variables"
> I bought books, read online docs and looked at examples... but I still
> can't use this important future properly.

You are almost there.

> Let me give you a example:
>
> I want to find files that are older than 7 days:
>
> - name: Find backups that are older than 7 days
> find: paths="/db-backups" age="7d"
> register: list_of_db_backups
>
> and I want to delete the files that I have found:
>
> - name: Cleanup backups that are older than 7 days
> file:
> name: "{{ item.path }}"
> state: absent
> with_items: list_of_db_backups.files

Writing variable without {{ }} in with_items was allowed in older
version of Ansible, in newer version {{ }} is required.
If you leave them out it's treated literally as the string
"list_of_db_backups.files".

So with
with_items: "{{ list_of_db_backups.files }}"

your code should work.

--
Kai Stian Olstad

[Cann]

Thank you very much Kai Stian Olstad!

It was really useful.