How do I access values of Ansible Facts when using a loop? - ansible

Question

This works when I don't use a loop:
---
- hosts: localhost
tasks:
- name: Get a cert from gRPC port
get_certificate:
host: "labrouter.abc.com"
port: 50051
delegate_to: localhost
run_once: true
ignore_errors: yes
register: cert
- name: Get Cert Data
debug:
msg: "Not_After: {{ cert.not_after }}"
Output:
TASK [Get Cert Data] ****************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": "Not After: 20221210143235Z"
}
However, when I try to loop through my hosts like this:
---
- hosts: localhost
tasks:
- name: Get a cert from gRPC port
get_certificate:
host: "{{ item }}"
port: 50051
delegate_to: localhost
run_once: true
ignore_errors: yes
register: cert
loop: "{{ groups['lab'] }}"
- name: Get Cert Data
debug:
msg: "Not After: {{ cert.not_after }}"
I get this error:
The error was: 'dict object' has no attribute 'not_after'
My inventory file contains a single group called "lab" with one device "labrouter.abc.com" associated to it.
I want to be able to add more devices to the "lab" group and run this playbook so I can get the "not_after" value for each device. I can't figure out how to access the "not_after" value for each item in the loop.

Answer 1

Quoting the documentation:
When you use register with a loop, the data structure placed in the variable will contain a results attribute that is a list of all responses from the module. This differs from the data structure returned when using register without a loop
The easiest way to fix your actual problem is to loop over the results:
- name: Get Cert Data
debug:
msg: "Not After: {{ item.not_after }}"
loop: "{{ cert.results }}"
Although this is a direct answer to your question, if the final goal is to take actions on each target in the lab group, see #Jack's answer and drop your loop.

Answer 2

Stop looping, and have Ansible do its implicit looping over the hosts:
---
- hosts: lab
tasks:
- name: Get a cert from gRPC port
get_certificate:
host: "{{ ansible_host }}"
port: 50051
delegate_to: localhost
ignore_errors: yes
register: cert
- name: Get Cert Data
debug:
msg: "Not After: {{ cert.not_after }}"
(As a general "best practices" thing, if you are looping over hosts, there's probably a better way to do it by setting the hosts value for the play to those hosts, and letting Ansible do its implicit looping.)