Create set_fact variables in one role and use them in an other

Question

I have a complicated environment with stages and users for multiple systems.

The stages are: dev, int, etc.

Each stage has a user for an application, let's call the user john. That leads to a user johnd for dev and johni for int and so on.

To abstract the system management, since all systems in the stages are the same, I created this data structure:

users:
  john:
    dev:
      name: "johnd"
    int:
      name: "johni"

Now I have a role "collect_user_information" which collects all kind of informations from LDAP and stores them in a variable with help of set_fact.

- name: Get the userhome out of LDAP
  shell: 'getent passwd {{ users[ user ][ stage ].name }} | cut -d: -f6'
  register: user_home

And set_fact:

- name: set facts for LDAP user
  set_fact:
    "{{user}}":
      name: "{{ users[ user ][ stage ].name }}"
      home: "{{ user_home.stdout }}"

To dump the variable, I use:

- name: debug output for myuser
  debug: var="{{user}}"

The debug output looks promissing.

TASK [collect_user_information : debug output for user] *******
ok: [host1] => {
  "john": {
     "home": "/home/johni",-
     "name": "johni"
  }
}

Now I would like to execute a role to create the users home.

- { role: create_user_home, user: "john" }

First I dump the entries of my variable:

- name: debug role create_user_home output for variable user
  debug: var=user

TASK [create_user_home : debug role create_user_home output for variable user] ***********
ok: [host1] => {
    "user": "john"
}

- name: debug role create_user_home output for variable john
  debug: var={{ user }}

TASK [create_user_home : debug role create_user_home output for variable john] **********
ok: [host1] => {
    "john": {
        "home": "/home/johni",-
        "name": "johni"
    }
}       

Now I would like use this data structure. I would guess I can access the values by referencing "{{user.name}}" or "{{user['name']}}', but neither works.

TASK [create_user_home : Create home directories for john] ***********************
fatal: [host1]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "the field 'args' has an invalid value, which appears to include a variable that is undefined. The error was: 'ansible.parsing.yaml.objects.AnsibleUnicode object' has no attribute 'home'\n\nThe error appears to have been in '/etc/ansible/roles/create_user_home/tasks/main.yml': line 37, column 3, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n- name: Create home directories for john\n  ^ here\n"}

Well, how does it work?

Answer 1

Okay I found the solution myself.

First I create an additional layer (myuser) in my data structure and use a different notation.

- name: set facts for LDAP user
  set_fact:
  myuser: '{ "{{user}}": { "name": "{{ users[ user ][ stage ].name }}", "home": "{{ user_home.stdout }}", "gid": "{{ user_gid.stdout}}", "group": "{{ user_primarygroup.stdout }}" } }'

This returns me a debug dump like this:

TASK [collect_user_information : debug output for myuser] ***********
ok: [host1] => {
    "myuser": {
        "john": {
            "home": "/home/johni",
            "name": "johni"
        }
    }
}

Now I'm able to use my data structure values. Remember "user" has been passed to the role by argument.

- name: Create home directories for user
  user:
    name: "{{ myuser[ user ].name }}"
    home: "{{ myuser[ user ].home }}"
    shell: "/bin/bash"
  register: "create_user_home"
  tags: [ 'user' ]

Hope that helps.