Iterating through two lists in Ansible - ansible

Question

I'm writing an ansible playbook that creates users in an internal system through a call to an API where the request body contains all of the user information in json format.
Right now my playbook hold all of those variables in a list of dictionaries like this:
userInfoDict: "{{[ {'FirstName': 'John', 'LastName': 'Lennon', 'Number': '', 'email': 'john#example.com'}, {'FirstName': 'Paul', 'LastName': 'McCartney', 'Number': '', 'email': 'paul#example.com'} ]}}"
Where the "Number" field is blank, I have a play to grab available phone numbers from an internal DB, and that list of numbers is held in a variable called numberList
What I want to do, is to iterate through UserInfoDict, and set the Number field to the next value in my list of numbers, But I haven't been able to do that.
Is there any way to do something like this in ansible? Where you access an object at an index of a list?
- set_fact:
finalUserInfo: "{{userInfoDict[i].Number : item}}"
loop: "{{numberList}}
Something like this ^

Answer 1

You can use the zip filter to combine the two lists together. This implies that you have an entry in your numberList for each element in your userInfoDict (side note: which is a misleading var name IMO since it is a list). I created such a list below from what I understood from your question.
You can loop directly on the zipped lists and access their relevant values.
If you absolutely need to create a new list of dicts with the combined info, there are several ways to do so. I used the json_query filter as a demo below (this requires pip install jmespath on the controller).
(Note: in the below playbook, the rather ugly ... to_json | from_json ... is needed to overcome a bug in jmespath <-> ansible communication where each elements of the zipped lists are otherwise interpreted as strings.)
---
- name: Zip demo
hosts: localhost
gather_facts: false
vars:
userInfoDict: [{'FirstName':'John','LastName':'Lennon','Number':'','email':'john#example.com'},{'FirstName':'Paul','LastName':'McCartney','Number':'','email':'paul#example.com'}]
numberList: ["[phone]", "[phone]"]
tasks:
- name: Looping over zipped lists directly
vars:
fancy_message: |-
User first name is: {{ item.0.FirstName }}
User last name is: {{ item.0.LastName }}
User number is: {{ item.1 }}
User email is: {{ item.0.email }}
debug:
msg: "{{ fancy_message.split('\n') }}"
loop: "{{ userInfoDict | zip(numberList) | list }}"
loop_control:
label: "{{ item.0.FirstName }} {{ item.0.LastName }}"
- name: Creating a new list of dicts with json_query
vars:
new_dict_query: >-
[*].{
"FirstName": [0].FirstName,
"LastName": [0].LastName,
"Number": [1],
"email": [0].email
}
new_dict_list: >-
{{
userInfoDict
| zip(numberList)
| list
| to_json
| from_json
| json_query(new_dict_query)
}}
debug:
var: new_dict_list
which gives:
PLAY [Zip demo] *****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
TASK [Looping over zipped lists directly] ***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => (item=John Lennon) => {
"msg": [
"User first name is: John",
"User last name is: Lennon",
"User number is: [phone]",
"User email is: john#example.com"
]
}
ok: [localhost] => (item=Paul McCartney) => {
"msg": [
"User first name is: Paul",
"User last name is: McCartney",
"User number is: [phone]",
"User email is: paul#example.com"
]
}
TASK [Creating a new list of dicts with json_query] *****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"new_dict_list": [
{
"FirstName": "John",
"LastName": "Lennon",
"Number": "[phone]",
"email": "john#example.com"
},
{
"FirstName": "Paul",
"LastName": "McCartney",
"Number": "[phone]",
"email": "paul#example.com"
}
]
}
PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
localhost : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0