How to read property files into a dictionary via Ansible

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I currently have a list of property files that I would like to merge into a single dictionary in an Ansible script.

An example file: “alpha.properties”:

name: Alpha
something_else: some_other_value
ip: 167.54.97.45
port: 5001
other_setting: other_value
etc…

(I am only interested in the name, ip and port for this dictionary)

Given a variable number of different property files, alpha, beta, charlie, etc… I would like to end up with a dictionary that looks like this:

{“array”:[

{“name”:”Alpha”, “ip”:”167.54.97.45”, “port”:”5001”},

{“name”:”Beta”, “ip”:”176.98.54.27”, “port”:”5042”},

{“name”:”Charlie”, “ip”:”132.67.54.231”, “port”:”9067”}

]}

(I am planning on using this dictionary to template a file, with a for loop inside the templated file)

So far I have managed to make this dictionary only by using some very dodge file manipulation, for example: (Code is not exact but you get the idea)

property_list has been set to [ “alpha”, “beta”, “charlie” ]

Get Name

  • shell cat {{ item }}.properties | grep "name: " | tail -c4 > {{ item }}.name.temp

with_items: property_list

Get IP

  • shell cat {{ item }}.properties | grep "ip: " | tail -c4 > {{ item }}.ip.temp

with_items: property_list

Get Port

  • shell cat {{ item }}.properties | grep "port: " | tail -c4 > {{ item }}.port.temp

with_items: property_list

Start of Dict File

  • shell echo {"array":[ > dict.temp

Merge Temp Files

  • shell echo { "name": {{ lookup(‘file’, ‘alpha.name.temp’) }}, "ip": {{ lookup(‘file’, ‘alpha.ip.temp’) }} "port": {{ lookup(‘file’, ‘alpha.port.temp’) }}, > dict.temp

with_items: property_list

End of Dict File (also got rid of extra comma but can’t remember how, not really important here)

  • shell echo ]} > dict.temp

Get Dictionary

  • set_fact:

dict_var: “{{ lookup(‘file’, ‘dict.temp’) }}”

While this does give me the correct Dictionary file, I would love to be able to do this either directly in a yml script using variables/facts, or using a custom module.

I have thought about writing a custom module, but I thought I’d check here first, and leave that as a last resort.

(Due to my older version of Red Hat I am using Ansible 1.9.4, instead of Ansible 2.x, which is why I haven’t used the lookup(‘ini’) command… but even this command would not completely solve my problem)

Please let me know if more information is needed. :smiley: