Ansible, how to query deeply nested json keys - ansible

Question

I'm using Ansible to make an API call that returns a huge data set, and I need to be able to get a nested value to print to the screen. I tried using json_query but not sure what I'm doing wrong.
My task:
- name: Get certificate by CN name.
uri:
method: GET
url: "https://mayapi/api/1/certificates?filter=cn;{{ inventory_hostname }}"
headers:
Authorization: Bearer {{ login.json.token }}
Content-Type: application/json
validate_certs: no
register: certs
- name: Print certs for application
debug:
msg: "{{ certs.json | json_query(items) }}"
This is a small snippet of the output. I want to be able to print ID, and email.
{
"msg": {
"changed": false,
"connection": "close",
"content_length": "65833",
"content_type": "application/json",
"cookies": {},
"cookies_string": "",
"date": "Mon, 10 May 2021 21:33:29 GMT",
"elapsed": 0,
"failed": false,
"json": {
"items": [
{
"active": true,
"application": [
{
"director": {
"active": true,
"email": "user#domain.com",
"fullname": "John Doe",
"id": 1611,
"manager": "John Doe",
"managerEmail": "johndoe#email.com",
"username": "jdoe"
},
...
...
...
}
I get the following error indicating "certs.items" doesn't exist:
FAILED! => {"msg": "Error in jmespath.search in json_query filter plugin:\n'items' is undefined"}
I was expecting all of the items to get printed to the screen and then if I wanted something below items I would do items.active, items.application, etc... But this is not correct since I keep erroring out.
I also tried looping through cert.json and cert.json.items:
- name: Print certs for application
debug:
msg: "{{ item.application.name }}"
loop: "{{ certs.json}}"
But get this error message:
{"msg": "Invalid data passed to 'loop', it requires a list, got this instead: {u'items': [{u'status': u'Active-Pending Install'...shows all the data of the nested json
Then I tried this:
- name: Print certs for application
debug:
msg: "{{ item.application.name }}"
loop: "{{ certs.json.items}}"
But got this error message:
{"msg": "Invalid data passed to 'loop', it requires a list, got this instead: <built-in method items of dict object at 0x7f0c9ec43050>. Hint: If you passed a list/dict of just one element, try adding wantlist=True to your lookup invocation or use q/query instead of lookup."}
Made some progress with this:
- name: Print certs for application
debug:
msg: "KEY:::: {{ item.key }}, VALUE:::: {{ item.value.0 }}"
loop: "{{ lookup('dict', certs.json) }}"
when: "'items' in item.key"
ignore_errors: yes
But this only prints items in index 0 of the list:
"msg": "KEY:::: items, VALUE:::: {u'status': u'Active-Pending Install', u'serialHex': u'1111', u'validityStart': u'2021-05-10T21:01:36+00:00', u'cn': u'node2.test.corp.net', u'validityEnd': u'2023-05-10T21:11:36+00:00', u'application': [{u'uuid': u'2222', u'name': u'abc'}], u'certType': u'CertType.INTERNAL', u'id': 2582, u'issuer': u'server1'}"
I'm trying to print the 'cn', 'id', and 'serialHex' values from each list element for the key 'items'.
This is the data set that I'm trying to query with Ansible:
{
"total": 2,
"items": [
{
"application": [
{
"uuid": "111",
"name": "CDE"
}
],
"validityEnd": "2023-05-10T21:11:36+00:00",
"certType": "CertType.INTERNAL",
"issuer": "server1",
"id": 2582,
"validityStart": "2021-05-10T21:01:36+00:00",
"status": "Active-Pending Install",
"serialHex": "aaa",
"cn": "node2.corp.net"
},
{
"application": [
{
"uuid": "222",
"name": "CDE"
}
],
"validityEnd": "2023-05-10T21:05:26+00:00",
"certType": "CertType.INTERNAL",
"issuer": "server1",
"id": 2581,
"validityStart": "2021-05-10T20:55:26+00:00",
"status": "Active-Pending Install",
"serialHex": "bbbb",
"cn": "node1.corp.net"
}
]
}

Answer 1

You are regrettably stepping on a quirk of "objects in ansible are python dicts" in that .items() and .keys() and quite a few other attributes-which-are-methods cannot be referenced using the . notation since jinja2 believes you intend to call that method. Rather, one must use the __getitem__ syntax of ["items"] in order to make it abundantly clear that you mean the dict key, and not the method of the same name
tasks:
- name: use json_query as you were originally asking
debug:
msg: >-
{{ certs.json | json_query('items[*].{c: cn,i: id,s: serialHex}') }}
- name: or a jinja2 for loop as you separately attempted
debug:
msg: >-
[
{%- for i in certs.json["items"] -%}
{{ "" if loop.first else "," }}
{{ [i.cn, i.id, i.serialHex ]}}
{%- endfor -%}
]
produces the output from their respective steps:
TASK [debug] ******************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": [
{
"c": "node2.corp.net",
"i": 2582,
"s": "aaa"
},
{
"c": "node1.corp.net",
"i": 2581,
"s": "bbbb"
}
]
}
TASK [debug] ******************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": [
[
"node2.corp.net",
2582,
"aaa"
],
[
"node1.corp.net",
2581,
"bbbb"
]
]
}