# Problem utilizing Survey data in template

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/problem-utilizing-survey-data-in-template/17657>\
**Category:** Ansible Developer\
**Created:** [March 3, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problem-utilizing-survey-data-in-template/17657 "2015-03-03T12:47:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jay\_Turner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Jay\_Turner](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Jay_Turner)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problem-utilizing-survey-data-in-template/17657/1 "2015-03-03T12:47:54Z")

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I am using a survey (textarea) to prompt for one or more entity names, and then wish to loop through those names in a template, creating a stanza for each entity. But it seems that no matter what types of escaping/formatting/whatnot I try, the entities are being processes as individual characters instead of strings. For example, entering:

fiber  
copper

In the textarea, then attempting to process in a template with _{% for entity in entities %}_ results in:  
‘f’  
‘i’  
‘b’  
‘e’  
‘r’  
‘c’

I’m tried quotes, I’m tried [‘fiber’, ‘copper’], and everything seems to be parsed character-by-character. This situation is made all the more frustrating by the fact that passing the same data via YAML works exactly as expected:

entities:

- fiber
- copper

I welcome any pointers to getting this working as I had hoped.

Thanks!

- jkt

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**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2015, 2:00pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problem-utilizing-survey-data-in-template/17657/2 "2015-03-03T14:00:46Z")

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