Testing (and failing inline) for data types in Ansible

I tend to write long and overly complicated set_fact statements in Ansible, ALL THE DAMN TIME. I write stuff like this:

rulebase: |
  {
    {% for var in vars | dict2items %}
      {% if var.key | regex_search(regex_rulebase_match) | type_debug != "NoneType"
        and (
          var.value | type_debug == "dict" 
          or var.value | type_debug == "AnsibleMapping"
        ) %}
        {% for item in var.value | dict2items %}
          {% if item.key | regex_search(regex_rulebase_match) | type_debug != "NoneType"
            and (
              item.value | type_debug == "dict" 
              or item.value | type_debug == "AnsibleMapping"
            ) %}
            "{{ var.key | regex_replace(regex_rulebase_match, '\2') }}{{ item.key | regex_replace(regex_rulebase_match, '\2') }}": {
              {# This block is used for rulegroup level options #}
              {% for key in ['log_from_start', 'log', 'status', 'nat', 'natpool', 'schedule', 'ips_enable', 'ssl_ssh_profile', 'ips_sensor'] %}
                {% if var.value[key] is defined and rule.value[key] is not defined %}
                  {% if var.value[key] | type_debug in ['string', 'AnsibleUnicode'] %}
                    "{{ key }}": "{{ var.value[key] }}",
                  {% else %}
                    "{{ key }}": {{ var.value[key] }},
                  {% endif %}
                {% endif %}
              {% endfor %}
              {% for rule in item.value | dict2items %}
                {% if rule.key in ['sources', 'destinations', 'services', 'src_internet_service', 'dst_internet_service'] and rule.value | type_debug not in ['list', 'AnsibleSequence'] %}
                  "{{ rule.key }}": ["{{ rule.value }}"],
                {% elif rule.value | type_debug in ['string', 'AnsibleUnicode'] %}
                  "{{ rule.key }}": "{{ rule.value }}",
                {% else %}
                  "{{ rule.key }}": {{ rule.value }},
                {% endif %}
              {% endfor %}
            },
          {% endif %}
        {% endfor %}
      {% endif %}
    {% endfor %}
  }

Now, if you’re writing set_fact or vars like this a lot, what you tend to end up with is the dreaded dict2items requires a dictionary, got instead. which basically means “Hah! You wrote a giant blob of what you thought was JSON, but didn’t render right, so we cast it to a string for you!”

The way I usually write my playbooks, I’ll do something with this set_fact at line, let’s say, 10, and then use it at line, let’s say, 500… So, I don’t know what the bloomin’ thing looks like then!

So, how to get around that? Well, you could do a type check. In fact, I wrote a bloomin’ big blog post explaining just how to do that!

However, that gets unwieldy really quickly, and what I actually wanted to do was to throw the breaks on as soon as I’d created an invalid data type. So, to do that, I created a collection of functions which helped me with my current project, and they look a bit like this one, called “is_a_string.yml“:

- name: Type Check - is_a_string
  assert:
    quiet: yes
    that:
    - vars[this_key] is not boolean
    - vars[this_key] is not number
    - vars[this_key] | int | string != vars[this_key] | string
    - vars[this_key] | float | string != vars[this_key] | string
    - vars[this_key] is string
    - vars[this_key] is not mapping
    - vars[this_key] is iterable
    success_msg: "{{ this_key }} is a string"
    fail_msg: |-
      {{ this_key }} should be a string, and is instead
      {%- if vars[this_key] is not defined %} undefined
      {%- else %} {{ vars[this_key] is boolean | ternary(
        'a boolean',
        (vars[this_key] | int | string == vars[this_key] | string) | ternary(
          'an integer',
          (vars[this_key] | float | string == vars[this_key] | string) | ternary(
            'a float',
            vars[this_key] is string | ternary(
              'a string',
              vars[this_key] is mapping | ternary(
                'a dict',
                vars[this_key] is iterable | ternary(
                  'a list',
                  'unknown (' ~ vars[this_key] | type_debug ~ ')'
                )
              )
            )
          )
        )
      )}}{% endif %} - {{ vars[this_key] | default('unset') }}

To trigger this, I do the following:

- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  vars:
    SomeString: abc123
    SomeDict: {'somekey': 'somevalue'}
    SomeList: ['somevalue']
    SomeInteger: 12
    SomeFloat: 12.0
    SomeBoolean: false
  tasks:
  - name: Type Check - SomeString
    vars:
      this_key: SomeString
    include_tasks: tasks/type_check/is_a_string.yml
  - name: Type Check - SomeDict
    vars:
      this_key: SomeDict
    include_tasks: tasks/type_check/is_a_dict.yml
  - name: Type Check - SomeList
    vars:
      this_key: SomeList
    include_tasks: tasks/type_check/is_a_list.yml
  - name: Type Check - SomeInteger
    vars:
      this_key: SomeInteger
    include_tasks: tasks/type_check/is_an_integer.yml
  - name: Type Check - SomeFloat
    vars:
      this_key: SomeFloat
    include_tasks: tasks/type_check/is_a_float.yml
  - name: Type Check - SomeBoolean
    vars:
      this_key: SomeBoolean
    include_tasks: tasks/type_check/is_a_boolean.yml

I hope this helps you, bold traveller with complex jinja2 templating requirements!

(Oh, and if you get “template error while templating string: no test named 'boolean'“, you’re probably running Ansible which you installed using apt from Ubuntu Universe, version 2.9.6+dfsg-1 [or, at least I was!] – to fix this, use pip to install a more recent version – preferably using virtualenv first!)

Featured image is “The Guitar Template” by “Neil Williamson” on Flickr and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.