Ansible uri with faild_when and loop fails - ansible

Question

I have a problem with a loop and failed_with in ansible. I don't know why.
The actual failed_when is much more complex, I know i could use status_code in this case.
It is my goal to parse the json response from a local api for multiple (dynamic list I got early from the api) objects and fail if it is not a response I expect.
- name: "get status for items"
uri:
url: https://{{inventory_hostname}}/status
method: POST
body_format: json
body: "{'index': {{item.index}}"
register: this
failed_when: "this.status != 200"
loop: "{{ item_list.json | json_query('[?state== `UNDEFINED`]') }}"
I get the error:
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! =>
msg: |-
The task includes an option with an undefined variable. The error was: 'this' is undefined
The error appears to be in '/home/blablup/Devel/ansible/roles/myrole/tasks/update.yml': line 48, column 3, but may
be elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.
The offending line appears to be:
- name: "get status for items"
^ here
But if I read the documentation it should work this way. Also if I look at this: Using `failed_when` on a `with_items` task depending on return codes example, failed_when should be evaluated for every iteration.

Answer 1

I am unable to reproduce the behavior you've described. If I wrap your task in sufficient code to run it, like this:
- hosts: localhost
gather_facts: false
vars:
item_list:
json:
- state: UNDEFINED
index: 0
- state: okay
index: 1
- state: UNDEFINED
index: 2
tasks:
- name: "get status for items"
uri:
url: http://localhost:5000/status
method: POST
body_format: json
body: "{'index': {{item.index}}"
register: this
failed_when: "this.status != 200"
loop: "{{ item_list.json | json_query('[?state== `UNDEFINED`]') }}"
And provide a server that will return either a 200 or a 400 response:
from flask import Flask, request, make_response
app = Flask(__name__)
#app.route("/status", methods=["POST"])
def status():
if b"2" in request.data:
return make_response("failed", 400)
else:
return make_response("okay", 200)
Then running your playbook produces the expected behavior (it succeeds when the server delivers a 200 response, and fails when the server returns a non-200 response):
TASK [get status for items] *****************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => (item={'name': 'foo', 'state': 'UNDEFINED', 'index': 0})
failed: [localhost] (item={'name': 'qux', 'state': 'UNDEFINED', 'index': 2}) => {"ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": false, "connection": "close", "content_length": "6", "content_type": "text/html; charset=utf-8", "date": "Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:10:05 GMT", "elapsed": 0, "failed_when_result": true, "item": {"index": 2, "name": "qux", "state": "UNDEFINED"}, "msg": "Status code was 400 and not [200]: HTTP Error 400: BAD REQUEST", "redirected": false, "server": "Werkzeug/2.2.2 Python/3.10.7", "status": 400, "url": "http://localhost:5000/status"}
I'm using Ansible core version 2.12.6.
Unrelated to your question, but this looks suspicious:
body: "{'index': {{item.index}}"
You're not delivering a JSON request body (JSON does not use single quotes and your brackets aren't balanced). You want something like this:
body: {
"index": "{{ item.index }}"
}