# using json as a password for docker\_login module

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/using-json-as-a-password-for-docker-login-module/31543>\
**Category:** Ansible Developer\
**Created:** [October 25, 2019, 7:16am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/using-json-as-a-password-for-docker-login-module/31543 "2019-10-25T07:16:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![user57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e480ec/32.png) [@user57](https://forum.ansible.com/u/user57)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2019, 7:16am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/using-json-as-a-password-for-docker-login-module/31543/1 "2019-10-25T07:16:13Z")

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I am trying to log into private docker container registry and I need to use a json-string as a password. So I do the following  
`

docker\_login:  
registry: cr.yandex  
username: json\_key  
password: “{{ lookup(‘file’, ‘key.json’) }}”  
reauthorize: yes

`  
And I got an error “Get [https://cr.yandex/v2/:](https://cr.yandex/v2/:) unauthorized: Password is invalid - must be JSON key”.

When I ran “ansible-playbook” in verbose mode I saw that the content of the file “key.json” was transcoded – double quotes were changed to single quotes so it have become an invalid json string.

Luckily I found a code that caused this behaviour: [https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/modules/cloud/docker/docker\_login.py#L318](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/modules/cloud/docker/docker_login.py#L318). The “password” is of type “string”. Then I changed “type=‘str’” to “type=‘json’” in my local file and everything worked!

I don’t know if I am doing something wrong or it is a real bug and I should create an issue on github. Could someone please help me?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![felixfontein](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/felixfontein/32/7530_2.png) [@felixfontein](https://forum.ansible.com/u/felixfontein)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 8:36am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/using-json-as-a-password-for-docker-login-module/31543/2 "2019-10-26T08:36:26Z")

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Hi,

> Luckily I found a code that caused this  
> behaviour:  
> [https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/modules/cloud/docker/docker\_login.py#L318](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/modules/cloud/docker/docker_login.py#L318).  
> The "password" is of type "string". Then I changed "type='str'" to  
> "type='json'" in my local file and everything worked!

that's not what "caused" this. The problem is that Ansible interprets  
your JSON file as a dictionary, parses it and passes it on as a  
dictionary. What you've done is telling the docker\_login module to no  
longer convert it back to a string, but to keep it as a dictionary.  
This will be passed on to the docker daemon as a dictionary (since  
docker-py says it wants the password to be a string, but won't check  
it). I don't know what the docker daemon will do with it. But this  
rather looks like accidental behavior than what is intended.

So your question should be: how do I pass the contents of a JSON file  
into the string parameter of a module without Ansible "destroying" it  
(by interpreting it as a dictionary)? That's a question better for the  
ansible-project google groups / mailing list.

Best regards,  
Felix Fontein