Installing multiple php modules with ansible - ansible

Question

I am trying to install multiple php modules with ansible
Here is the example of tasks:
- name: debug php modules
debug: msg="{{ php_version }}-{{ item }}"
with_items: php_modules
- name: php modules/extensions are installed
yum:
state=present
name="{{ php_version }}-{{ item }}"
with_items: "{{ php_modules }}"
when: php_modules is defined
and the actual variables defined:
vars:
php_version: php56u
php_modules:
- intl
- pdo
The playbook fails with "No Package matching 'pdo' found available, installed or updated"
I tried with with_items: php_modules and couldn't get it to work properly. It is strange because debug above works every time:
ok: [server-1] => (item=intl) => {
"item": "intl",
"msg": "php56u-intl"
}
ok: [server-1] => (item=pdo) => {
"item": "pdo",
"msg": "php56u-pdo"
}
A strange issue. I might be missing something very simple here?

Answer 1

Thanks to #udondan for the hint about debugging output of yum module. That helped a lot! It turns out ansible yum module tries to install everything at once and hence the list becomes something like "php56u-intl,pdo" instead of "php56u-intl,php56u-pdo" (hence the difference with the way "debug" module treats it, debug runs multiple times for each item but yum puts them all together).
The bug/feature/limitation was actually reported here: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/5871
The trick, as one of the comments in the issue lists is to use "join", which forces yum module to run each item separately:
- name: php modules/extensions are installed
yum:
state=present
name={{ item|join('-') }}
with_nested:
- php_version
- php_modules
when: php_modules is defined
This is potentially the only way to do it until ansible yum module adds an option "one_by_one_install_please_please_please: true/false"