How to use facts under ansible_facts as filter in Smart Inventory?

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1

I have gone through different posts related to this. The API method to set filter for Smart Inventory works on host variables however, i am not able to filter the hosts in smart inventory based on ansible_facts.
I am using the following filter rule in the API section. It is getting set when i run PUT for the filter changes but it doesn’t identify the hosts where AIR_ID_32 (custom fact set using set_fact on host) is present.

“host_filter”: “ansible_facts.AIR_ID_32__icontains="2000"”

The AIR_ID_32 fact will always have a list of values and will be visible under facts section like the following:

AIR_ID_32:

  • ‘2000’
  • ‘2010’

Also, is it possible to exclude specific inventory or target only specific inventory when creating a Smart Inventory?

Regards,
Ankit

2

Have you run a template on the hosts with fact caching enabled? From what I remember, the hosts need to have these facts collected and stored before you can use the variables in a smart inventory filter. I’m not sure how the fact filter works with lists though I know that it only supports equality checks. The Tower Smart Inventory looks like it has a way to get around the equality one matches to provide contains-like functionality: https://www.ansible.com/blog/ansible-tower-advanced-smart-inventory-usage

Essentially, in a playbook, create an indicator fact that is True if “2000” is in the fact, false otherwise.

And from my usage I haven’t found any way to limit a Smart Inventory to a single Inventory.

3

Ankit,

You can search for exact equality:

“host_filter”: “ansible_facts.AIR_ID_32="2000"”

…but Django lookup-based filters (like icontains) aren’t currently supported on ansible_facts because postgres doesn’t give us a way to search these efficiently.

Here’s a related issue:
https://github.com/ansible/awx/pull/3152

4

Hi,

with similar requirement - i tried below for ip addresses read x as actual IPs but it didn’t work. Looks like searching list doesn’t work.

“host_filter”: “ansible_facts.ansible_ip_addresses="x.x.x.x"”, or “host_filter”: “ansible_facts__ansible_ip_addresses="x.x.x.x"”,

Thanks,
Harshal

5

Glad you have a need for list searching! Use the empty notation https://github.com/ansible/awx/blob/devel/docs/inventory_refresh.md#fact-searching

6

Thanks Christopher it worked with

In another scenario, i am trying to get working using filter (gt - greater than) I couldn’t find any examples for this. Can you please help with example for it? will make life easier.

Thanks,
Harshal

7

In addition to Harshal’s query, i have tried to typecast the values to int where greater than would be required in the smart inventory host_filter:

set_fact:
Pending_Reboot: false
Missing_Security_Patches: “{{ missing_sp.stdout | int }}”
Missing_Hotfix_Patches: “{{ missing_hfp.stdout | int }}”

cacheable: true

sample value for the set fact for hosts":
Missing_Security_Patches: ‘0’

and trying to set the host_filter as following:
“host_filter”: “ansible_facts__ansible_distribution="RedHat" and ansible_facts. Missing_Security_Patches__gt=0”

Is the issue related to the type of the value for the host (it looks like string even after typecasting it to int in playbook)

Regards,
Ankit

8

Harshal,

You can only filter on facts using equality. This is for postgres performance reasons related to jsonb types and gin indexes. That being said, I’ve written a blog article on how to work around this limitation https://www.ansible.com/blog/ansible-tower-advanced-smart-inventory-usage

9

Ankit,

The casting is an Ansible problem. See https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/15249 They have added the ability to have the cast work like you want by setting the ansible setting ANSIBLE_JINJA2_NATIVE=true

However, you still aren’t going to be able to do the __gt=0 query. But you can work around this by doing the gt test in Ansible and setting a boolean value accordingly. See https://www.ansible.com/blog/ansible-tower-advanced-smart-inventory-usage

10

Thanks Chris. For the blog link. Now understood the real purpose of this blog. :slight_smile: Hope other operators will be available soon in AWX host filters soon.