Programmatic variable name access

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1

Hello,

I’ve search here for “programmatic” and had a look at http://docs.ansible.com/faq.html#how-do-i-access-a-variable-name-programatically but remain stumped.

I’ve got these group_vars/all.yml:

applist: [ boldface, taximeter ]

appconf:
boldface:
repo: https://github.com/opyate/twitter-word-source
install_dir: “/opt/apps/boldface”
description: “Twitter Word Source API”
http_port: 3000
https_port: 4440
taximeter:
repo: https://github.com/opyate/taximeter
install_dir: “/opt/apps/taximeter”
description: “Taxi cab fare API as per TFL guidelines”
http_port: 3001
https_port: 4441

I’ve got this task (and many others for these similar apps):

  • name: API | Create app dir
    file: dest={{appconf[$item][‘install_dir’]}} owner=$ansible_ssh_user group=admin mode=755 state=directory
    sudo: yes
    tags: api
    with_items: “{{applist}}”

I expect it to create /opt/apps/boldface and /opt/apps/taximeter

However, I end up with stuff like this (after trying varying combinations of the ‘dest’ parameter in the task):

r00t@vagrant-ubuntu-saucy-64:~$ ls /home/r00t/*
/home/r00t/{{appconf[+boldface][install_dir]}}:

/home/r00t/{{appconf[boldface][‘install_dir’]}}:

/home/r00t/{{appconf[boldface][install_dir]}}:

/home/r00t/{{appconf[+taximeter][install_dir]}}:

/home/r00t/{{appconf[taximeter][‘install_dir’]}}:

/home/r00t/{{appconf[taximeter][install_dir]}}:

/home/r00t/[{‘key’: ‘boldface’}, {‘key’: ‘taximeter’}]:
boldface taximeter

Please let me know what I’m doing wrong.

Thanks,
Juan

2

Don't quote applist and don't put it in brackets for your with_items.

with_items: applist

-jlk

3

Thanks, that’s a good tip. Turns out I had a similarly-named variable in the role’s vars which mucked with the group vars.

I now also have dest={{appconf[item][‘install_dir’]}} and it works fine.