Ansible integer variables in YAML - yaml

Question

I'm using Ansible to deploy a webapp. I'd like to wait for the application to be running by checking that a given page returns a JSON with a given key/value.
I want the task to be tried a few times before failing. I'm therefore using the combination of until/retries/delay keybwords.
Issue is, I want the number of retries to be taken from a variable. If I write :
retries: {{apache_test_retries}}
I fall into the usual Yaml Gotcha (http://docs.ansible.com/YAMLSyntax.html#gotchas).
If, instead, I write:
retries: "{{apache_test_retries}}"
I'm being said the value is not an integer.
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '{{apache_test_retries}}'
Here is my full code:
- name: Wait for the application to be running
local_action:
uri
url=http://{{webapp_url}}/health
timeout=60
register: res
sudo: false
when: updated.changed and apache_test_url is defined
until: res.status == 200 and res['json'] is defined and res['json']['status'] == 'UP'
retries: "{{apache_test_retries}}"
delay: 1
Any idea on how to work around this issue? Thanks.

Answer 1

I had the same issue and tried a bunch of things that didn't work so for some time I just worked around without using a variable but found the answer so for everyone who has it.
Daniels solution indeed should work:
retries: "{{ apache_test_retries | int }}"
However, if you are running a little older version of Ansible it won't work. So make sure you update Ansible. I tested on 1.8.4 and it works and it doesn't on 1.8.2
This was the original bug on ansible:
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/5865

Answer 2

You should be able to convert it to an integer with the int filter:
retries: "{{ apache_test_retries | int }}"

Answer 3

I had the same problem and the solutions suggested here didn't work. I didn't try Tim Diels' suggestion though.
Here's what worked for me:
vars:
capacity: "{{ param_capacity | default(16) }}"
tasks:
- name: some task
...
when: item.usage < (capacity | int)
loop:
...
And here's what I was trying to do:
vars:
capacity: "{{ (param_capacity | default(16)) | int }}"
tasks:
- name: some task
...
when: item.usage < capacity
loop:
...
I found this issue on GitHub, about this same problem, and actually the intended way to use this filter is applying it where you use the variable, not where you declare it.

Answer 4

I have faced a similar issue, in my case I wanted to restart celeryd service. It sometimes takes a very long time to restart and I wanted to give it max 30 seconds for a soft restart, then force-restart it. I used async for this (polling for restart result every 5 seconds).
celery/handlers/main.yml
- name: restart celeryd
service:
name=celeryd
state=restarted
register: celeryd_restart_result
ignore_errors: true
async: "{{ async_val | default(30) }}"
poll: 5
- name: check celeryd restart result and force restart if needed
shell: service celeryd kill && service celeryd start
when: celeryd_restart_result|failed
And then I use above in the playbook as handlers to a task (restart celeryd is always first in notify list)
In your case something like below could possibly work. Haven't checked whether it does but it might give you some hack idea to solve it in a different way. Also since you will be ignoring errors in the 1st task, you need to make sure that things are fine in 2nd:
- name: Poll to check if the application is running
local_action:
uri
url=http://{{webapp_url}}/health
timeout=60
register: res
sudo: false
when: updated.changed and apache_test_url is defined
failed_when: res.status != 200 and res['json'] is not defined and not res['json']['status'] == 'UP'
ignore_errors: true
async: "{{ apache_test_retries | default(60) }}"
poll: 1
# Task above will exit as early as possible on success
# It will keep trying for 60 secs, polling every 1 sec
# You need to make sure it's fine **again** because it has ignore_errors: true
- name: Final UP check
local_action:
uri
url=http://{{webapp_url}}/health
timeout=60
register: res
sudo: false
when: updated.changed and apache_test_url is defined
failed_when: res.status != 200 and res['json'] is not defined and not res['json']['status'] == 'UP'
Hope it helps you solve the issue with a bug in retries.