# with\_items task and when: statement

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-task-and-when-statement/21493>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [May 19, 2016, 4:09pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-task-and-when-statement/21493 "2016-05-19T16:09:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Julien\_Tognazzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b38774/32.png) [@Julien\_Tognazzi](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Julien_Tognazzi)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 4:09pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-task-and-when-statement/21493/1 "2016-05-19T16:09:23Z")

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What is the proper way to skip a with\_items tasks if the with\_items variable is undefined ?

I’ll try to explain my use case:  
I have some variable defined via the group\_vars

And I want to do loop over this variable only if it is defined.

Before ansible 2 it worked without problem  
with a playbook like

`

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sivel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/sivel/32/1198_2.png) [@sivel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sivel)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 4:17pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-task-and-when-statement/21493/2 "2016-05-19T16:17:25Z")

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The correct way is to just drop the `when` statement and rely on the `|default` filter:

tasks:

- name: “some loop”  
debug: var=item  
with\_items:
- “{{ my\_var|default() }}”

`when` statements are evaluated for every iteration of the loop, not before the loop. So they are evaluated after ansible attempts to start looping.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Josh\_Smift1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bcef8e/32.png) [@Josh\_Smift1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Josh_Smift1)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 4:21pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-task-and-when-statement/21493/3 "2016-05-19T16:21:14Z")

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The other thing you could do is define an empty value in a role default,  
if you're in a role. (There doesn't seem to be a way to do that if you're  
not in a role, i.e. to define a playbook default that can be overridden by  
group or host variables, at least not that I see in the precedence list at  
[https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks\_variables.html#variable-precedence-where-should-i-put-a-variable](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_variables.html#variable-precedence-where-should-i-put-a-variable) .)

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-Josh (jbs@care.com)

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