include when foo['bar'] is defined

[Bret Martin]

I have a number of plays like

- include: data-importer.yml

  when: instances['data-importer'] is defined

that no longer work after a recent Ansible upgrade. The include occurs even when instances['data-importer'] is not set. I tracked the behavior change down to between 1.8.1 and 1.8.2.

Is this supposed to still work?

[Brian Coca]

The include should always happen, the when: should be applied to the
included tasks and these should be skipped.



--
Brian Coca

[Bret Martin]

Thanks for the quick reply. That is definitely the behavior I've seen previously. Looking closer after your description of what happens, I note that the included tasks are being skipped. The failure is happening on a task that uses with_items, where the with_items line refers to the variable tested in the include/when.

Playbook/parent file:

- include: data-importer.yml
when: instances['data-importer'] is defined

Included file 1:

- include: instance-common.yml
description="Data Importer"
instance=data-importer


Included file 2:

- name: create {{ description }} instance
ec2:
[...]
with_items: instances[instance]["hostname"]


With this arrangement, I get

TASK: [aws-ec2 | create Data Importer instance] *******************************
fatal: [aws-vpc-hbi16058] => with_items expects a list or a set


So my problem seems to be specific to with_items and skipped tasks.

--Bret

[Brian Coca]

when won't prevent with_items from evaluating, since the when: can
include the 'item' variable to be conditional per iteration. Add a
|default([]) to avoid this issue.




--
Brian Coca

[Bret Martin]

Thanks again. I tried changing the play in the innermost file (actually, before I even started this thread) to

- name: create {{ description }} instance
ec2:
[...]

with_items: instances[instance]["hostname"] | default([])

but the result is the same:

TASK: [aws-ec2 | create Data Importer instance] *******************************
fatal: [aws-vpc-hbi16058] => with_items expects a list or a set

--Bret