Ansible Strange conditional behavior - ansible

Question

I'm facing a strange issue while trying to search inside a dictionary. In the code above, i'm trying to define a new var "OLD_VLANID_PP", with the value of the "name" key of the dictionary "VM_NETWORK_INFOS_PP".
If the dictionary is set and not empty, I want the var to be defined, otherwise just skip the task.
In order to test if the condition was true or false, I've added a debug task which should display the content of the dictionary.
When running my playbook, the debug task does indicates that the condition is not matched, and so doesn't display my dictionary, but Ansible keep trying to define my new var as shown in the output, and so fires an error "'item' is undefined"
---
- block:
#Search VCENTER for PPROD VM (If Windows to create => Search PG / EIther search Postgre)
- name: Search for PPROD VM already created for the CLIENT {{ CLIENTNAME }} to retrieve VLANID
set_fact:
OLD_VMNAME_PP: "{{ item.guest_name }}"
with_items: "{{ VM_EXIST_PP.virtual_machines }}"
when: item.guest_name == VMNAME_PP
delegate_to: localhost
when: ENV != "PROD" and DEPLOY != "ALL" and (VM_EXIST_PP is defined) and (VM_EXIST_PP|length > 0)
#If we successfully found the previous VM for the client, then get its network info
- name: Retrieve PPROD VM {{ VMNAME_PP }} VLAN ID
community.vmware.vmware_guest_network:
hostname: "{{ vcenter_server }}"
username: "{{ vcenter_user }}"
password: "{{ vcenter_pass }}"
datacenter: "{{ datacenter_name }}"
validate_certs: False
name: "{{ OLD_VMNAME_PP }}"
gather_network_info: true
register: VM_NETWORK_INFOS_PP
when: (OLD_VMNAME_PP is defined) and OLD_VMNAME_PP != ""
- block:
- debug: msg={{VM_NETWORK_INFOS_PP}}
#If we successfully found the network info, set the OLD_VLANID with previous VM VLANID
- set_fact:
OLD_VLANID_PP: "{{ (item.name) | replace('(HDS : Client)','') | replace('VLAN0','') | replace('VLAN','') | replace(' ','') }}"
with_items:
- "{{ VM_NETWORK_INFOS_PP.network_info }}"
when: item.name | regex_search('VLAN') and not item.name | regex_search('PVLAN')
when: (VM_NETWORK_INFOS_PP is defined) and VM_NETWORK_INFOS_PP != ""
Debug Output (Should display the dictionary content) :
ok: [127.0.0.1] => {
"msg": {
"changed": false,
"skip_reason": "Conditional result was False",
"skipped": true
}
}
Error Output :
The error was: error while evaluating conditional (item.name | regex_search('VLAN') and not item.name | regex_search('PVLAN')): 'item' is undefined
Ansible Version : 2.10.7
Python Version : 3.7.3
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you

Answer 1

Not sure if it's the right thing to do, but finally get ride of this issue using :
when: item is defined and item.name | regex_search('VLAN') and not item.name | regex_search('PVLAN')
note the item is defined before the regex search