Ignore a module option

[Mateus Dubiela Oliveira]

Hello,

I'm trying to create a helper role to raise ec2 instances, and I stumbled in a problem where I wanted to deleted or ignore some module options, based on the role vars.

First, let's say I have a playbook like this.

---

- name: Raise ec2 instance

    ec2:

      key_name: my_key

      instance_type: m1.medium

      image: i999999

      region: us-east-1

      zone: us-east-1e

      wait: 1000

      count_tags:

        tag: value

      exact_count: "{{my_count}}"

If I wanted to ignore the 'exact_count' option one may think that if you set 'my_count' to 'null' or '!!null' it will be interpreted as 'None', the default value for that option, and the module will behave as if it was not set. But because of this issue, which created this code, the interpreter now translates the None values to a empty string, which then makes the interpreter crash like so.

TASK: [aws-instance | Raise ec2 instance] ***************************

failed: [localhost] => {"failed": true, "parsed": false}

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/home/user/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-9999999999.99-999999999999999/ec2", line 2962, in <module>

    main()

  File "/Users/user/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-9999999999.99-999999999999999/ec2", line 1164, in main

    ['exact_count', 'instance_ids']

  File "/home/user/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-9999999999.99-999999999999999/ec2", line 1504, in __init__

    self._check_argument_types()

  File "/home/user/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-9999999999.99-999999999999999/ec2", line 2160, in _check_argument_types

    self.params[k] = int(value)

ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: ''

FATAL: all hosts have already failed -- aborting

IMHO this is unwanted behaviour, since there is no way to unset a module option or even ignore then. I don't know if I'm missing something, but if I do, please show me :)

Thanks,

[Brian Coca]

try:

exact_count: "{{my_count|default(omit)}}"

---------------
Brian Coca

[Mateus Dubiela Oliveira]

Thanks! 

Sorry for the stupid question, I should've looked up a little better :(

I've managed to obtain the behaviour I wanted like this:

my_aws_role/tasks/main.yml

- name: Raise ec2 instance

    ec2:

      key_name: my_key

      instance_type: m1.medium

      image: i999999

      region: us-east-1

      zone: us-east-1e

      wait: 1000

      count_tags: "{{my_tags}}"

      exact_count: "{{my_count}}"

my_aws_role/defaults/main.yml

exact_count: "{{ omit }}"

my_tags: "{{mandatory}}"

create-instance.yml

- name: Create a pong server

  hosts: localhost:

  vars:

     exact_count: 1

     tags:

       server_app: pong

  roles:

    - my_aws_role

Thank you again!