odd problem with conditionals

Archives Ansible Developer
1

Hí all,

I have a really odd problem with a conditional evaluation in a set_fact, this is a excerpt in where the result of the evaluation depend on the order of the variables, see it.

tasks.yml

2

This is happening because the values that are being set inside of the ansible_facts in your tasks are strings, not booleans.

ex.
{“ansible_facts”: {“updated_sources”: “True”}}

The above is the string “True”. Not the boolean True. Likewise,

{“ansible_facts”: {“configuration_changed”: “False”}}

Is the string “False”, which is, of course, equivalent to boolean True. (http://www.thomas-cokelaer.info/tutorials/python/boolean.html)

So when your conditionals are evaluated in the set_fact, you’re basically comparing only boolean True values. The reason that you get “False” there is because the string “False” is equivalent to boolean True. So the value you’re seeing here

{“ansible_facts”: {“appclone_pm_must_restart1”: “False”, “appclone_pm_must_restart2”: “True”}}

Is actually the string, not the boolean.

You can see this behavior with this simple python script.

“”"
#!/usr/bin/env python

ok1 = “False”
ok2 = “True”
ok3 = True
ok4 = False
ok5 = “False2”

print (ok1 or ok2)
print (ok2 or ok1)
print (ok4 or ok3)
print (ok3 or ok4)
print (ok5 or ok2)
“”"

The output of which looks like this

$ python ok.py
False
True
True
True
False2

In your case, you’re seeing the equivalent of my “False2” above. If you want to fix your playbook, you have 2 options.

  1. Return booleans in your first 2 tasks instead of strings
  2. Cast the values in your set_fact to bool

For #2, it would look like this.

…

tasks:

  • set_fact:
    appclone_pm_must_restart1: “{{ configuration_changed|bool or updated_sources|bool }}”
    appclone_pm_must_restart2: “{{ updated_sources|bool or configuration_changed|bool }}”

…

Hope that helps.
-tim