Why Ansible-Tower is ignoring extra variables? - ansible

Question

Trying to lunch a job workflow via REST API and passing extra variables for the playbook to consume, but returned body shows that provided variables are put in ignored_fields section.
Used POSTMAN and CURL to run the templates both returned the same result
CURL command
curl -X POST http://172.16.0.97/api/v2/job_templates/8/launch/ -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer Je
gxwfQrdKQXoRUtNWtWFz62FX5bTy" -d "{\"extra_vars\": {\"vendor\":\"juniper\"}}"
Returned body
{"job":34,"ignored_fields":{"extra_vars":{"vendor":"juniper"}},"id":34,"type":"job","url":"/api/v2/jobs/34/","related":{"created_by":"/api/v2/users/1/","modified_by":"/api/v2/users/1/","labels":"/api/v2/jobs/34/labels/","inventory":"/api/v2/inventories/1/","project":"/api/v2/projects/7/","extra_credentials":"/api/v2/jobs/34/extra_credentials/","credentials":"/api/v2/jobs/34/credentials/","unified_job_template":"/api/v2/job_templates/8/","stdout":"/api/v2/jobs/34/stdout/","job_events":"/api/v2/jobs/34/job_events/","job_host_summaries":"/api/v2/jobs/34/job_host_summaries/","activity_stream":"/api/v2/jobs/34/activity_stream/","notifications":"/api/v2/jobs/34/notifications/","job_template":"/api/v2/job_templates/8/","cancel":"/api/v2/jobs/34/cancel/","create_schedule":"/api/v2/jobs/34/create_schedule/","relaunch":"/api/v2/jobs/34/relaunch/"},"summary_fields":{"inventory":{"id":1,"name":"Demo Inventory","description":"","has_active_failures":true,"total_hosts":1,"hosts_with_active_failures":1,"total_groups":0,"groups_with_active_failures":0,"has_inventory_sources":false,"total_inventory_sources":0,"inventory_sources_with_failures":0,"organization_id":1,"kind":""},"project":{"id":7,"name":"Cox-Phase3","description":"","status":"successful","scm_type":"git"},"job_template":{"id":8,"name":"Port Flap","description":""},"unified_job_template":{"id":8,"name":"Port Flap","description":"","unified_job_type":"job"},"created_by":{"id":1,"username":"admin","first_name":"","last_name":""},"modified_by":{"id":1,"username":"admin","first_name":"","last_name":""},"user_capabilities":{"delete":true,"start":true},"labels":{"count":0,"results":[]},"extra_credentials":[],"credentials":[]},"created":"2019-05-14T09:43:16.115516Z","modified":"2019-05-14T09:43:16.177517Z","name":"Port Flap","description":"","job_type":"run","inventory":1,"project":7,"playbook":"main.yml","forks":0,"limit":"","verbosity":1,"extra_vars":"{}","job_tags":"","force_handlers":false,"skip_tags":"","start_at_task":"","timeout":0,"use_fact_cache":false,"unified_job_template":8,"launch_type":"manual","status":"pending","failed":false,"started":null,"finished":null,"elapsed":0.0,"job_args":"","job_cwd":"","job_env":{},"job_explanation":"","execution_node":"","controller_node":"","result_traceback":"","event_processing_finished":false,"job_template":8,"passwords_needed_to_start":[],"ask_diff_mode_on_launch":false,"ask_variables_on_launch":false,"ask_limit_on_launch":false,"ask_tags_on_launch":false,"ask_skip_tags_on_launch":false,"ask_job_type_on_launch":false,"ask_verbosity_on_launch":false,"ask_inventory_on_launch":false,"ask_credential_on_launch":false,"allow_simultaneous":false,"artifacts":{},"scm_revision":"","instance_group":null,"diff_mode":false,"job_slice_number":0,"job_slice_count":1,"credential":null,"vault_credential":null}

Answer 1

According to the fine manual, AWX (and thus Tower) version 3.0 and greater has made extra_vars more strict: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-tower/latest/html/userguide/job_templates.html#ug-jobtemplates-extravars
If you are running a version greater than 3.0, you will need to either turn on playbook survey or set ask_variables_on_launch=True for that template

Answer 2

In my case, I'm using curl -L ... and the payload got lost after the redirect. Be sure to double check that if you find the extra_vars still gets ignored after ensuring ask_variables_on_launch=True.

Answer 3

Tangentially related to the API when utilizing the AWX and Tower CLI I ran into a similar issue of variables not being taken when launching jobs. The solution was that on the Job Template in Tower the "Prompt on Launch" setting needed to checked for the variable to pass through. So much time wasted on such a simple miss.