Ansible loop over range of letters in template - ansible

Question

I'm trying to generate an Ansible template that increments on letters alphabetically rather than numbers. Is there a function similar to range(x) that could help me?
pseudo code example
{% for letter in range(a, d) %}
{{ letter }}
{% endfor %}
expected output
a
b
c
d
Alternatively is there a way to convert a number into it's alphabetical equivalent in Ansible?
{% for i in range(6) %}
{{ convert(i) }}
{% endfor %}
UPDATE
For those who are curious, here's how I ended up applying #zigam's solution. The goal was to create xml tags with every host from a hostgroup.
In my role defaults:
ids: "ABCDEFGHIGJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ"
In my template:
{% for host in groups['some_group'] %}
<host-id="{{ ids[loop.index] }}" hostName="{{ host }}" port="8888" />
{% endfor %}

Answer 1

You can iterate over a string:
{% for letter in 'abcd' %}
{{ letter }}
{% endfor %}
If you want to iterate over a range of the alphabet:
{% set letters='abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ' %}
{% for letter in letters[:6] %} {# first 6 chars #}
{{ letter }}
{% endfor %}

Answer 2

you can use a custom filter plugin to do what you want
in filter_plugins/scratch_filter.py:
def scratch_filter(n):
return chr(n)
class FilterModule(object):
''' Number to Character filter '''
def filters(self):
return {
'scratch_filter': scratch_filter
}
in scratch-template.j2:
{% for x in range(101, 113) %}
{{ x|scratch_filter }}
{% endfor %}
in scratch_playbook.yml
---
- hosts: localhost
tasks:
- name: test loop
template:
src: "{{ playbook_dir }}/scratch-template.j2"
dest: "{{ playbook_dir }}/scratch-template-output.txt"