Ansible: Issues when importing boolean from json file - json

Question

I want to use a json file for user management in ansible. Therefore I created a json file containing all the user and groups like this (user_group_management.json):
{
"linux_users": [
{
"name": "myuser",
"uid": 1003,
"group": "myuser",
"groups": "users,sudo",
"shell": "/bin/bash",
"password": <password as sha-512>,
"create_home": "yes",
"home": "/home/user",
"hosts": ["hostname1","hostname2","hostname3"]
},
{...},
...
],
"linux_groups": [...],
}
Now I wrote an ansible script for adding the users and groups (user_group_management.yml):
- name: User and group management
hosts: all
vars_files:
- user_group_management.json
tasks:
[part for adding groups (no problems here)]
- name: Add users
ignore_errors: yes
user:
name: item.name
uid: item.uid
group: item.group
groups: item.groups
shell: item.shell
password: item.password
create_home: item.create_home
home: item.home
state: present
when: ansible_hostname in item.hosts
loop: "{{ linux_users }}"
When running the ansible script using ansible-playbook --check user_management.yml I get these error messages concerning the "Add users" task:
"msg": "The value 'item.create_home' is not a valid boolean. Valid booleans include: 0, 'on', 'f', 'false', 1, 'no', 'n', '1', '0', 't', 'y', 'off', 'yes', 'true'"
I tried to fix this issue by replacing "create_home": "yes", with "create_home": 1, but it did not change anything. Now I added curly brackets around the variable (item.create_home -> "{{ item.create_home }}") which solved the issue. So now I do not get any error messages again.
Sadly I do not understand why this helped me. I thought that item.create_home is a string ("yes") in the first place and should be an integer (1) after editing the json file. But both give me the errors. Is there an explanation for this phenomenon?

Answer 1

If don't have a lot of experience with json manipulation in ansible however have you tried to change
"create_home": "yes",
to
"create_home": true,
Another solution it to convert the value you expect to be boolean with a jinja filter |bool when using it.
The official documentation provides
- debug:
msg: test
when: some_string_value | bool
as an example with when condition.
For your case it should be
create_home: item.create_home
should become
create_home: "{{ item.create_home | bool }}"
general advice: You should enclose your variables inside "{{ }}"