Ansible: access json field and use it as variable - json

Question

I have to send some PUT requests to a server, at the URL: https://XXXX.com/id, and passing as the body some json files (item1.json, item2.json ...).
- name: invoke service
uri:
url: "https://XXXX.com/{{ item.id }}"
method: PUT
return_content: yes
body_format: json
headers:
Content-Type: "application/json"
X-Auth-Token: "XXXXXX"
body: "{{ lookup('file', item) }}"
with_items:
- item1.json
- item2.json
- item3.json
The id parameter of the url is within the respective json file. The structure of the json files is the following:
{
"address": "163.111.111.111",
"id": "ajsaljlsaaj",
"server": "dnnwqkwnlqkwnldkwqldn"
}
The code I have written seems not to work, and I get 'ansible.vars.unsafe_proxy.AnsibleUnsafeText object' has no attribute 'id'.
So how can that field been accessed?

Answer 1

The issue is that in the following line:
url: "https://XXXX.com/{{ item.id }}"
The value of item is the JSON file name as defined in with_items, not the content of the JSON file.
The quickest fix is to open and parse the JSON file the same way you do in your body: declaration:
- name: invoke service
uri:
url: "https://XXXX.com/{{ ( lookup('file', item)|from_json ).id }}"
method: PUT
return_content: yes
body_format: json
headers:
Content-Type: "application/json"
X-Auth-Token: "XXXXXX"
body: "{{ lookup('file', item) }}"
with_items:
- item1.json
- item2.json
- item3.json
One nicer solution would be to use the with_file: directive instead of with_items.
with_file would automatically open and read the file content, so no need to call lookup anymore:
- name: Provision the Docker Swarm managers
hosts: localhost
tags: provision
gather_facts: False
become: True
tasks:
- name: invoke service
uri:
url: "https://XXXX.com/{{ (item|from_json).id }}"
method: PUT
return_content: yes
body_format: json
headers:
Content-Type: "application/json"
X-Auth-Token: "XXXXXX"
body: "{{ item }}"
with_file:
- item1.json
- item2.json
- item3.json