Use list of dictionaries variable on Ansible Tower textare survey - ansible

Question

I'm trying to develop a playbook were I have the following variable.
disk_vars:
- { Unit: C, Size: 50 }
- { Unit: D, Size: 50 }
With the variables defined on the playbook there is no problem but when I try to use a texarea survey on Ansible Tower I cannot manage to parse them as list of dictionaries.
I tried adding to the survey the following two lines which are already on yaml format.
- { Unit: C, Size: 50 }
- { Unit: D, Size: 50 }
And on my vars section I use test_var: "{{ test_var1.split('\n') }} which converts the output into a two line string. Without the split is just a single line string.
I could make my playbook work with a simple dictionary like
dict1: {{ Unit: C, Size: 50 }}
but I'm having issues parsing it as well.
EDIT
Changing it to the following as suggested by mdaniels works.
- set_fact:
test_var: "{{ test_var1 | from_yaml }}"
- name: test
debug: msg=" hostname is {{ item.Unit }} and {{ item.Size }}"
with_items:
- "{{ test_var }}"
I'm trying to figure a way to clear-up the data input as asking users to respect the format is not a very good idea.
tried changing the input date to the following but I could not figure out how to format that into a list of dictionaries.
disk_vars:
Unit: C, Size: 50
Unit: D, Size: 50
I tried with the following piece of code
- set_fact:
db_list: >-
{{ test_var1.split("\n") | select |
map("regex_replace", "^", "- {") |
map("regex_replace", "$", "}") |
join("\n") }}
But is putting it all on a single line.
"db_list": "- {dbid: 1, dbname: abc\ndbid: 2, dbname: xyz} "
I have tried to play with it but could not manage to make it work.

Answer 1

I believe you were very close; instead of "{{ test_var1.split('\n') }}" I believe you can just feed it to the from_yaml filter:
- set_fact:
test_var1: '{{ test_var1 | from_yaml }}'
# this is just to simulate the **str** that you will receive from the textarea
vars:
test_var1: "- { Unit: C, Size: 50 }\n- { Unit: D, Size: 50 }\n"
- debug:
msg: and now test_var1[0].Unit is {{ test_var1[0].Unit }}

Answer 2

I faced a similar dilemma, i.e. that I was bound to the survey format(s) available, and I was forced to use mdaniels suggested solution above with sending the data as text and then later parse it from YAML . Problem was however that controlling the format of the input (i.e. a YAML-string inside the text) would probably cause a lot of headache/errors, just like you describe.
Maybe you really need to use the Survey, but in my case I was more interested of calling the Job Template using the Tower REST API. For some reason I thought I then had to have a survey with all parameters defined. But it turned out I was wrong, when having a survey I was not able to provide dictionaries as input data (in the extra_vars). However, when removing the Survey, and also (not sure if required or not) enabling "Extra Variables -> prompt on launch", then things started to work!! Now I can provide lists / dictionaries as input to my Templates when calling them using REST API POST calls, see example below:
{
"extra_vars": {
"p_db_name": "MYSUPERDB",
"p_appl_id": "MYD32",
"p_admin_user": "myadmin",
"p_admin_pass": "mysuperpwd",
"p_db_state": "present",
"p_tablespaces": [
{
"name": "tomahawk",
"size": "10M",
"bigfile": true,
"autoextend": true,
"next": "1M",
"maxsize": "20M",
"content": "permanent",
"state": "present"
}
],
"p_users": [
{
"schema": "myschema",
"password": "Mypass123456#",
"default_tablespace": "tomahawk",
"state": "present",
"grants": "'create session', 'create any table'"
}
]
}
}