Unable to use Parentheses for Jinja2 functions in Conditionals

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1

Hello,

I’m having problems using a Jinja2 function in an Ansible conditional and was hoping someone could please help me find a way around it.

As far as I can tell I must use both parentheses and single quotes in the Jinja2 function I’m using but these mean that I cannot avoid Ansible reporting template errors.

  • I want a role to run at all times EXCEPT between 01:45 to 02:20 UTC.
  • I cannot ensure that the OS uses UTC timezone, so found the Jinja2 now() function is the best way to determine this.

I’ve tried a few different varients of the conditionals below but this is the easiest format to read:

- name: workstation role
  hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  become: true
  tasks:
    - name: WORKSTATION_ROLE
      include_role:
        name: workstation
      # Skip role execution during daily patch window to avoid conflicts with apt lock.  Do not run between 01:45 and 02:20
      when:
        - not ( now('utc').hour == 01 and now('utc').minute >= 45 )
        - not ( now('utc').hour == 02 and now('utc').minute < 20 )

Ansible returns the error:

The error was: template error while templating string: expected token ')', got 'integer'. String: {% if not ( now('utc').hour == 01 and now('utc').minute >= 45 ) %} True {% else %} False {% endif %}

but I need to use those parentheses for the now() function and also cannot use single quotes to escape them as they are required for the ‘utc’ argument.

EDIT: I’ve also tried negating the whole conditional, but then need to use parentheses because I need to use a logical OR instead of a logical AND.

Any tips for what I should try please?

Thank you in advance!

PS: I could not find any complex examples of the use of parentheses in official Ansible documentation and nothing like the problem I have with needing to use them inside the conditional “template”.

2

If anyone tries to test this, note that the conditional only fails when the hour is either 01 or 02. Please change those hours to suit whenever you are testing.

Ansible-lint doesn’t pick up this problem either.

TIA!

3

The issue has nothing to do with functions or parentheses, it’s your erroneous leading zeros.

        - not ( now('utc').hour == 1 and now('utc').minute >= 45 )
        - not ( now('utc').hour == 2 and now('utc').minute < 20 )

01 is not a valid integer literal, so it confuses the parsing and you get an error related to the enclosing context.

- hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - debug:
      when:
        - '02'

TASK [debug] *******************************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => 
    msg: |-
        The conditional check '02' failed. The error was: template error while templating string: expected token 'end of statement block', got 'integer'. String: {% if 02 %} True {% else %} False {% endif %}. expected token 'end of statement block', got 'integer'
3 Likes
4

Thank you very much! That’s it!

I wasn’t sure of the format of now('utc').hour was and hadn’t thought about that.