CODEWITHSUNDEEP
booleanansibleansible-2.x
Simply Seth
Simply Seth

Reputation: 3506

Using True False with Ansible When Clause

I'm running into the silliest issue. I cannot figure out how to test for boolean in an Ansible 2.2 task file.

In vars/main.yml, I have: 

destroy: false

In the playbook, I have:

roles: 
  - {'role': 'vmdeploy','destroy': true}

In the task file, I have the following: 

- include: "create.yml"
  when: "{{ destroy|bool }} == 'false'"

I've tried various combinations below:

when: "{{ destroy|bool }} == false"
when: "{{ destroy|bool }} == 'false'"
when: "{{ destroy|bool  == false}}"
when: "{{ destroy  == false}}"
when: "{{ destroy  == 'false'}}"
when: destroy|bool  == false
when: destroy|bool  == 'false'
when: not destroy|bool

In all the above cases, I still get:

statically included: .../vmdeploy/tasks/create.yml

Debug output:

- debug:
    msg: "{{ destroy }}"

---

ok: [atlcicd009] => {
"msg": true
}

The desired result, is that it would skip the include.

Upvotes: 56

Views: 201949

Answers (5)

Jigyasa Priyadarshini
Jigyasa Priyadarshini

Reputation: 21

In a similar problem that I ran into, I was trying to include_role under my tasks. The roles were to be triggered based on a boolean condition. The below syntax worked for me:

tasks:
- name: trigger role 
  include_role:
    name: "role_path_here"
  when:
  - call_the_role|bool

call_the_role variable was not declared in this file. Since my problem was more specific to using include_role I took help/ reference from https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/18124

Upvotes: 1

Félix Castillo Sánchez
Félix Castillo Sánchez

Reputation: 111

I have been struggling on this issue too. My problem was, that the variable was not declared inside the script but was given as a extra parameter. In this case you need to convert to bool explicitly

when: destroy|bool

or

when: not destroy|bool

Upvotes: 11

Henrik Pingel
Henrik Pingel

Reputation: 3203

There is no need to use the bool Jinja filter if the value of the variable is defined under hostvars.

To cast values as certain types, such as when you input a string as “True” from a vars_prompt and the system doesn’t know it is a boolean value.

So a simple

when: not destroy

should do the trick.

Upvotes: 29

Simply Seth
Simply Seth

Reputation: 3506

The include kept happening before the when.

So I just made the include dynamic. 

---- defaults/main.yml
mode: "create"

---- tasks/main.yml
- include: "{{ mode + '.yml' }}"

Upvotes: -12

techraf
techraf

Reputation: 68609

To run a task when destroy is true:

---
- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  vars:
    destroy: true
  tasks:
    - debug:
      when: destroy

and when destroy is false:

---
- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  vars:
    destroy: false
  tasks:
    - debug:
      when: not destroy

Upvotes: 94

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