Display error message if variable isn't set using playbook

[Samnang Sen]

Let's say I ask for a revision_no from the user. If the user doesn't input a value, I would like to display a custom message. Right now ansible shows a bunch of "skipping" message, but I know my users would want to know why it skipped.

- hosts: webservers

  user: deployment

#  serial: 1

  vars_prompt:

   - name: "revision_no"

     prompt: "Input revision number"

     private: no

  vars_files:

  - "group_vars/deploy_list"

  roles:

  - { role: web, when: revision_no is not defined }

[Samnang Sen]

That last line is supposed to read "revision_no is defined"

[Garrett Plasky]

There may be a better way to do this but I solved the problem by having a separate task initially that verifies the variable is set and fails the play if not (via the fail module).

- name: Checking for required variables

  fail: msg="Playbook execution failed - 'revision_no' is required!"

  when: not revision_no

If you don't want the play to outright fail, you could replace the fail module with something like debug.

[Michael DeHaan]

You can say this specifically:

       when: revision_no is not defined

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[Samnang Sen]

This does not work for me. Garrett's example does ...

[Samnang Sen]

So, here's the full site.yml file. If I dont input a revision number (I hit enter at the prompt), it throws the error message as expected BUT it also executes the role. I want it to bomb out w/ the error msg and not continue.

 

---

- hosts: webservers

  user: deployment

#  serial: 1

  vars_prompt:

   - name: "revision_no"

     prompt: "Input revision number"

     private: no

  vars_files:

  - "group_vars/deploy_list"

  tasks:

  - name: Checking for required variables

    fail: msg="Playbook execution failed - 'revision_no' is required!"

    when: not revision_no

  roles:

  - { role: web, when: revision_no is defined }

[Garrett Plasky]

I believe this is because variables set via vars_prompt are always defined.

A workaround might be to set a default for revision_no and check it doesn’t match in your role, e.g.:

vars_prompt:

  - name: “revision_no"

    prompt: "Input revision number”

    default: “invalid”

    private: no

…..

roles:

  - { role: web, when: revision_no != “invalid” }

I’ve not made extensive use of roles so it seems odd to me that a role would still execute when a failure is thrown but it must have something to do with Ansible’s order of execution.

-- 

Garrett Plasky

Evernote Operations

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[Sam S]

I figured it out, not sure if this is valid.

roles:

  - { role: web, when: revision_no }

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[Michael DeHaan]

Seems like your variable is defined then, just False.

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[Stanislav Antic]

not revision_no works because of you just do Enter it will have empty string and empty string is False. It's matter of preference but I would test for that.

You can always do debug to see true value:

  tasks:
    - debug: msg={{revision_no}}