Question:
In Ansible I’ve used register to save the results of a task in the variable people. Omitting the stuff I don’t need, it has this structure:
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{ "results": [ { "item": { "name": "Bob" }, "stdout": "male" }, { "item": { "name": "Thelma" }, "stdout": "female" } ] } |
I’d like to use a subsequent set_fact task to generate a new variable with a dictionary like this:
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{ "Bob": "male", "Thelma": "female" } |
I guess this might be possible but I’m going round in circles with no luck so far.
Answer:
I think I got there in the end.
The task is like this:
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- name: Populate genders set_fact: genders: "{{ genders|default({}) | combine( {item.item.name: item.stdout} ) }}" with_items: "{{ people.results }}" |
It loops through each of the dicts (item) in the people.results array, each time creating a new dict like {Bob: "male"}, and combine()s that new dict in the genders array, which ends up like:
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{ "Bob": "male", "Thelma": "female" } |
It assumes the keys (the name in this case) will be unique.
I then realised I actually wanted a list of dictionaries, as it seems much easier to loop through using with_items:
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- name: Populate genders set_fact: genders: "{{ genders|default([]) + [ {'name': item.item.name, 'gender': item.stdout} ] }}" with_items: "{{ people.results }}" |
This keeps combining the existing list with a list containing a single dict. We end up with a
genders array like this:|
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[ {'name': 'Bob', 'gender': 'male'}, {'name': 'Thelma', 'gender': 'female'} ] |