Trying to include a list of tasks from an playbook in Ansible - ansible

Question

My folder structure:
First I'll give you this so you can see how this is laid out and reference it when reading below:
/environments
/development
hosts // Inventory file
/group_vars
proxies.yml
/custom_tasks
firewall_rules.yml // File I'm trying to bring in
playbook.yml // Root playbook, just brings in the plays
rev-proxy.yml // Reverse-proxy playbook, included by playbook.yml
playbook.yml:
---
- include: webserver.yml
- include: rev-proxy.yml
proxies.yml just contains firewall_custom_include_file: custom_tasks/firewall_rules.yml
firewall_rules.yml:
tasks:
- name: "Allowing traffic from webservers on 80"
ufw: src=10.10.10.3, port=80, direction=in, rule=allow
- name: "Allowing traffic all on 443"
ufw: port=443, rule=allow
and finally rev-proxy.yml play:
---
- hosts: proxies
become: yes
roles:
- { role: firewall }
- { role: geerlingguy.nginx }
pre_tasks:
# jessie-backports for nginx-extras 1.10
- name: "Adding jessie-backports repo"
copy: content="deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main" dest="/etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie-backports.list"
- name: Updating apt-cache.
apt: update_cache="yes"
- name: "Installing htop"
apt:
name: htop
state: present
- name: "Coopying SSL certificates"
copy: src=/vagrant/ansible/files/ssl/ dest=/etc/ssl/certs force=no
tasks:
- name: "Including custom firewall rules."
include: "{{ inventory_dir }}/{{ firewall_custom_include_file }}.yml"
when: firewall_custom_include_file is defined
vars_files:
- ./vars/nginx/common.yml
- ./vars/nginx/proxy.yml
What I'm trying to do:
Using Ansible 2.2.1.0
I'm trying to include a list of tasks that will be run if a variable firewall_custom_include_file is set. The list is included relative to the inventory directory by doing "{{ inventory_dir }}/{{ firewall_custom_include_file }}.yml" - in this case that works out to /vagrant/ansible/environments/development/custom_tasks/firewall_rules.yml
Essentially the idea here is that I need to have different firewall rules be executed based on what environment I'm in, and what hosts are being provisioned.
To give a simple example: I might want to whitelist a database server IP on the production webserver, but not on the reverse proxy, and also not on my development box.
The problem:
Whenever I include firewall_rules.yml like above, it tells me:
TASK [Including custom firewall rules.] ****************************************
fatal: [proxy-1]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "reason": "included task files must contain a list of tasks"}
I'm not sure what it's expecting, I tried taking out the tasks: at the beginning of the file, making it:
- name: "Allowing traffic from webservers on 80"
ufw: src=10.10.10.3, port=80, direction=in, rule=allow
- name: "Allowing traffic all on 443"
ufw: port=443, rule=allow
But then it gives me the error:
root#ansible-control:/vagrant/ansible# ansible-playbook -i environments/development playbook.yml
ERROR! Attempted to execute "/vagrant/ansible/environments/development/custom_tasks/firewall_rules.yml" as inventory script: problem running /vagrant/ansible/environments/development/custom_tasks/firewall_rules.yml --list ([Errno 8] Exec format error)
Attempted to read "/vagrant/ansible/environments/development/custom_tasks/firewall_rules.yml" as YAML: 'AnsibleSequence' object has no attribute 'keys'
Attempted to read "/vagrant/ansible/environments/development/custom_tasks/firewall_rules.yml" as ini file: /vagrant/ansible/environments/development/custom_tasks/firewall_rules.yml:2: Expected key=value host variable assignment, got: name:
At this point I'm not really sure what it's looking for in the included file, and I can't seem to really find clear documentation on this, or other people having this issue.

Answer 1

Try to execute with -i environments/development/hosts instead of directory.
But I bet that storing tasks file inside inventory is far from best practices.
You may want to define list of custom rules as inventory variable, e.g.:
custom_rules:
- src: 10.10.10.3
port: 80
direction: in
rule: allow
- port: 443
rule: allow
And instead of include task, make something like this:
- ufw:
port: "{{ item.port | default(omit) }}"
rule: "{{ item.rule | default(omit) }}"
direction: "{{ item.direction | default(omit) }}"
src: "{{ item.src | default(omit) }}"
with_items: "{{ custom_rules }}"