How do I reference a nested key in Ansible? - ansible

Question

I have a task in ansible that greps a list of emails in a loop. I am trying to get the "stdout_lines" output of this.
vars:
emails:
- test#email.com
tasks:
- name: search
register: found
shell: "grep -i {{item}} ~/file"
with_items: "{{emails}}"
debug:
msg: "{{found.results}}"
The above displays the following:
"msg": {
"changed": true,
"msg": "All items completed",
"results": [
{
"ansible_loop_var": "item",
"changed": true,
"cmd": "grep -i test#email.com ~/file",
"delta": "0:00:00.003060",
"end": "2020-10-19 12:52:29.930458",
"failed": false,
"invocation": {
"module_args": {
"_raw_params": "grep -i test#email.com ~/x",
"_uses_shell": true,
"argv": null,
"chdir": null,
"creates": null,
"executable": null,
"removes": null,
"stdin": null,
"stdin_add_newline": true,
"strip_empty_ends": true,
"warn": true
}
},
"item": "test#email.com",
"rc": 0,
"start": "2020-10-19 12:52:29.927398",
"stderr": "",
"stderr_lines": [],
"stdout": "test#email.com line 1\ntest#email.com line2",
"stdout_lines": [
"test#email.com line 1",
"test#email.com line 2"
]
}
]
}
And when I try
debug:
msg: "{{found.results.stdout_lines}}"
I get the error
fatal: [127.0.0.1]: FAILED! => {"msg": "The task includes an option
with an undefined variable. The error was: 'list object' has no
attribute 'stdout_lines'
I should also note that I run into issues when I have more than one email in the list, but one problem at at time.

Answer 1

When you run an Ansible module in a loop, like you have done here with the shell module, the results key is a list (docs).
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.
Since found.results is a list of objects it doesn't have a stdout_lines key itself, rather each of its items do. Depending on what you need you could access the key on the first item:
found.results[0].stdout_lines
You could loop over each item again and do something with each:
- name: Do something with output
example:
var: "{{ item }}"
loop: found.results
You could run the map filter over it, for example to concatenate the lines in each stdout_lines item:
found.results | map(attribute='stdout_lines') | join('\n')