indexing variable list using a variable

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1

Hi guys,
I’m testing out some variable logic here, would really appreciate some help.
I have the following content in one of my vars_files:

2

set_fact: mybackend="{{hostvars[inventory_hostname]['db'][varwithbackendnumber]}}"

3

THanks Brian. I can’t seem to get this working. I can access the individual items using indexing
(this works:

  • set_fact: mybackend=“{{ db[0] }}”
    )
    But I can’t for the life of me figure out how to access by “item name” (or if that’s even a valid thing in yaml). I can obviously redo the way I format the contents of my variable file, but I can’t seem to strike gold. Struggling to find a good example of this in the docs/examples.
4

hm, maybe I’d be better off splitting the different location vars into separate files, and then use

with_first_found

I could then loop over group_names until the node found a valid variable file.
5

Just for reference, this is what I ended up doing:

  1. in my play, I created separate vars files for each site, these correspond to the current host’s group membership:
  • include_vars: “{{ item }}”
    with_first_found:
  • “db_{{ autogroup2 }}.yml”
  1. in each var file I used the following structure:
6

i was going to say, you cannot reference lists by name
so

db:
  - first:
      stuff: lasdjkf
      la: dida
  - second:
      stuff: aslkdfjsk
      la: lala

is a list, if you wanted to reference by name you need to make it a
hash/dictionary so you can only get first through db[0].

db:
  first:
      stuff: lasdjkf
      la: dida
  second:
      stuff: aslkdfjsk
      la: lala

now you can do db['first']