Ansible integer variables in 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