Json and local facts.

[Marcin Prączko]

Hi,

I am working on some tasks related with local facts and not sure whether followig issue is a bug or is designed.
Following ansible documentation localfacts can be in JSON or INI format. I've choosen JSON format - is much more easier to write variables like this:

module:
  name: "apache"
  version: "1.0.4"
  status: "Installed"

Saving this with following task brings result:
- name: Write variable to json file
  copy: content="{{ module }}" dest=/etc/ansible/facts.d/{{ module.name }}.fact
        owner=root group=root mode=0644

Result:
{'status': 'Installed', 'version': '1.0.4', 'name': 'apache'}

However python is not able read this anymore - including ansible:

ok: [IP-HERE] => {                                                               
    "msg": "work - variable: {u'apache': u'error loading fact - please check content'}"
}                                                                                      

Command from python:
# cat apache.fact | python -mjson.tool
Expecting property name: line 1 column 1 (char 1)

Converting this local facts with following task / command - automatically allow read this file by python and ansible.

- name: Fix wrong json format in local facts
  shell: sed -i "s/'/\"/g" *.fact chdir=/etc/ansible/facts.d/

Could you advice whether I should raise this on Github bug list or this is working exectly as should?

Best regards,
Marcin Praczko

[jack]

Anyone has clue for this question, we have same issue, we are doing something like:

At one ansible playbook, to collect some local facts, and save those facts into a file (using copy content), the saved file looks like:

{u'status': u'Installed', u'version': u'1.0.4', u'name': u'apache'}


Later on, there is other ansible playbook will load those facts back in (using local_vars), even we replace the single quote, the facts file still cannot be loaded back, because there is leading "u" at each element,

Thanks
Jack

[Matt Martz]

You should be using the "to_json" filter to convert the python data structure to JSON.  Or potentially even the "to_nice_json" filter.

Such as:

- name: Write variable to json file

  copy: content='{{ module|to_json }}' dest=/etc/ansible/facts.d/{{ module.name }}.fact 
        owner=root group=root mode=0644

Also note that I changed the double quotes to single quotes.  JSON data will use double quotes, and you could end up with the quotes breaking you out of the value for content.

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Matt Martz
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sivel.net

[jack]

That works, thank you so much.