CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ansiblejinja2
Alok Patra
Alok Patra

Reputation: 419

How do i fail a task in Ansible if the variable contains a boolean value? I want to perform input validation for Ansible playbooks

The variables are being passed as extra_args by loading them from a YAML file. I have tried the following but it doesn't work:

- name: Check if variable are of type boolean
  fail:
    msg: "Variable '{{ item }}' is not a boolean"
  when: item is not bool
  with_items: "{{ required_boolean_vars }}"

Also, similar to boolean, how could I do the same for integer, dictionary and object type.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3989

Answers (3)

Dag Wieers
Dag Wieers

Reputation: 1923

The proper way to ensure a variable is not a boolean, is to use the sameas Jinja2 test like this:

when: item is not sameas true and item is not sameas false

Upvotes: 0

techraf
techraf

Reputation: 68559

There is a general type_debug filter which returns the type, so for Boolean the condition is:

when: "item | type_debug == 'bool'"`

Another way:

when: item is sameas true or item is sameas false

For a dictionary:

when: item is mapping

For a list:

when: item is iterable

Also, the above conditional checks item for being Boolean as you asked in the title. Add not if you wanted to test for the opposite as your code suggests...

Upvotes: 5

Alok Patra
Alok Patra

Reputation: 419

A workaround I found to fail task if variables NOT of type boolean was 

- name: Check if variable are of type boolean
  assert:
    that: "{{ item }} == false or {{ item }} == true"
    msg: "Variable {{ item }} is not of type boolean"
  with_items: "{{ required_boolean_vars }}"

where required_boolean_vars contains a list of variables I want to check.

Upvotes: 0

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