Post json data with URI module

I am trying to post a variable that gets defined during my playbook as json to a webservice. Unfortunately I have not been able to get the URI module to post valid json.

`

  • name: lookup act_transaction in database
    mongo_query: >
    host={{ams_ip}} user=user password={{pass}}
    database=db collection=transactions
    filter=‘{}’ projection=‘{“_id”:True}’
    sort=‘start_time’ direction=-1 limit=1
    register: query

  • name: login to gui
    run_once: yes
    uri:
    url: “https://{{ ip }}/login”
    method: POST
    follow_redirects: all
    body: “username={{amg_username}}&password={{amg_password}}&next=/”
    HEADER_Origin: “https://{{ ams_ip }}”
    HEADER_Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
    register: cookie

  • name: create request body
    set_fact:
    req:
    _id: “{{ query.results[0]._id[‘$oid’] }}”
    guids: [ “{{ guid }}” ]

  • debug: var=genconfig_req

  • debug: msg=“{{ genconfig_req }}”

  • name: generate config
    when: ams_deploy and do_act
    uri: >
    url=“https://{{ ams_ip }}/generate_config”
    method=POST
    body=“{{ req|to_nice_json }}”
    follow_redirects=all
    HEADER_Origin=“https://{{ ams_ip }}”
    HEADER_Content-Type=application/json
    HEADER_Cookie=“{{ cookie.set_cookie }}”

`

when this request is made to the webserver, the webserver logs an error for invalid json ( SyntaxError: Unexpected token _ ). I have tried every combination I can think of to escape our the dictionary as a valid json string. I added a debug failure log to the URI module to see what the URI module was seeing.:

`

if url == “https://192.168.141.42/generate_config”: # so we only fail on the problem task
module.fail_json(msg = “type = %s, body = %s” %( type( body ), str(body) ))
resp, content = h.request(url, method=method, body=body, headers=headers)

`

This logs for me

`

failed: [192.168.141.120] => {“failed”: true}
msg: type = <type ‘str’>, body = {_id: 5504a68130600c6b05691b93, guids: [0021FA000000000002000000000007D1]}

`

which i think confirms that the module is just not sending valid json, the keys and values should be quoted. I assume the problem has something to do with the order the yaml is processed, the json filter gets applied before the playbook is analyzed, and ansible maybe sees the json data as more yaml so it gets loaded as such. I’m just guessing.

Interesting when I used the yaml format ( body: “{{ req }}” ) I was getting a dictionary instead of a string. I have tried decomposing the variable ( both yaml and inline format ) so:

body='{ "_id": "{{ req._id }}", "guids": [ "{{ guid }}" ] }'

I have tried the filters: string, to_nice_json, and to_json

About the only thing I haven’t tried is writing the variable to a file using the copy module with content=“{{ req|to_nice_json }}” and then using a file lookup like the example shows.

Anybody have any ideas?