Accessing hashes of lists

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1

Hi,

I need to store information about applications in a variable data structure and access it via key.

If I store the information as follows I can access using with_items

  • hosts: localhost
    connection: local
    vars:
    apps:
    admin:
  • service: admin
    handler: /admin
    port: 1200
    …
    rpt:
  • service: rpt
    handler: /rpt
    port: 1234
    …
    tasks:
  • debug:
    msg: “{{ item.service }} = {{ item.port }}”
    with_items: apps.admin

TASK: [debug ] ****************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => (item={‘handler’: ‘/admin’, ‘port’: 1200, ‘service’: ‘admin’}) => {
“item”: {
“handler”: “/admin”,
“port”: 1200,
“service”: “admin”
},
“msg”: “admin = 1200”
}

How can I access one of the nested variables directly keying on application. The following won’t work.

  • debug:
    msg: “{{ apps.admin.service }}”

TASK: [debug ] ****************************************************************
fatal: [localhost] => One or more undefined variables: ‘list’ object has no attribute ‘service’

I can’t use with_items as I need to call lots of roles. I don’t want to pass the information directly to the roles as variables as I want to have it defined in one place and it needs to be used in multiple places.

I.e application configuration and apache virtual host definitions.

Any help most appreciated.

I’m happy to change the structure. All I need to do is store an amount of information keyed by application

Thanks

James

2

In your example, apps.admin actually contains a list of dictionaries. So accessing it would be: apps.admin[0].service.

3

Thanks, I think I need to reconsider my data structure.

I need to be able to iterate over applications in a group in some situations but also key in by application name in others

I’ll have a think.

Thanks