Ansible converting month to integer - json

Question

I haven't found anything for this yet.
I am using Ansible and I'm trying to change some values after a decent amount of time.
But my problem is I get a value like:
2020 Nov 19
But I need it to be like:
2020 11 19
How can I do this?

Answer 1

using to_datetime and strftime you can achieve it. the filters to apply would be:
"{{ '%Y %m %d' | strftime(( my_date_string | to_datetime('%Y %b %d')).strftime('%s')) }}"
as reference, please see the examples here. The idea is to convert your string value to datetime using the to_datetime, then to epoch time using strftime, and finally reformat that to your desired YYYY MM DD.
A PB with 3 example dates:
---
- hosts: localhost
gather_facts: false
vars:
my_date_examples:
- "2020 Nov 04"
- "2020 Apr 11"
- "2020 Aug 23"
tasks:
- name: reformat date string
debug:
msg: "{{ '%Y %m %d' | strftime(( item | to_datetime('%Y %b %d')).strftime('%s')) }}"
loop: "{{ my_date_examples }}"
output:
TASK [reformat date string] *******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => (item=2020 Nov 04) => {
"msg": "2020 11 04"
}
ok: [localhost] => (item=2020 Apr 11) => {
"msg": "2020 04 11"
}
ok: [localhost] => (item=2020 Aug 23) => {
"msg": "2020 08 23"
}
cheers