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How Exactly Does Ansible Parse Boolean Variables?

In Ansible, there are several places where variables can be defined: in the inventory, in a playbook, in variable files, etc. Can anyone explain the following observations that I have made?

  1. When defining a Boolean variable in an inventory, it MUST be capitalized (i.e., True/False), otherwise (i.e., true/false) it will not be interpreted as a Boolean but as a String.
  2. In any of the YAML formatted files (playbooks, roles, etc.) both True/False and true/false are interpreted as Booleans.

For example, I defined two variables in an inventory:

abc=false
xyz=False

And when debugging the type of these variables inside a role...

- debug:
    msg: "abc={{ abc | type_debug }}  xyz={{ xyz | type_debug }}"

... then abc becomes unicode but xyz is interpreted as a bool:

ok: [localhost] => {
    "msg": "abc=unicode  xyz=bool"
}

However, when defining the same variables in a playbook, like this:

  vars:
    abc: false
    xyz: False

... then both variables are recognized as bool.

I had to realize this the hard way after executing a playbook on production, running something that should not have run because of a variable set to 'false' instead of 'False' in an inventory. Thus, I'd really like to find a clear answer about how Ansible understands Booleans and how it depends on where/how the variable is defined. Should I simply always use capitalized True/False to be on the safe side? Is it valid to say that booleans in YAML files (with format key: value) are case-insensitive, while in properties files (with format key=value) they are case-sensitive? Any deeper insights would be highly appreciated.

like image 483
dokaspar Avatar asked Dec 18 '17 22:12

dokaspar


People also ask

How do Ansible variables work?

Ansible uses variables to manage differences between systems. With Ansible, you can execute tasks and playbooks on multiple different systems with a single command. To represent the variations among those different systems, you can create variables with standard YAML syntax, including lists and dictionaries.

How pass Boolean value in YAML?

In YAML 1.1 the bool type is defined as following: A Boolean represents a true/false value. Booleans are formatted as English words (“true”/“false”, “yes”/“no” or “on”/“off”) for readability and may be abbreviated as a single character “y”/“n” or “Y”/“N”.

Is Ansible case sensitive?

Basic is case sensitive when validating input module names #51528.

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1 Answers

Variables defined in YAML files (playbooks, vars_files, YAML-format inventories)


YAML principles

Playbooks, vars_files, and inventory files written in YAML are processed by a YAML parser first. It allows several aliases for values which will be stored as Boolean type: yes/no, true/false, on/off, defined in several cases: true/True/TRUE (thus they are not truly case-insensitive).

YAML definition specifies possible values as:

y|Y|yes|Yes|YES|n|N|no|No|NO
|true|True|TRUE|false|False|FALSE
|on|On|ON|off|Off|OFF

Ansible docs confirm that:

You can also specify a boolean value (true/false) in several forms:

create_key: yes
needs_agent: no
knows_oop: True
likes_emacs: TRUE
uses_cvs: false


Variables defined in INI-format inventory files


Python principles

When Ansible reads an INI-format inventory, it processes the variables using Python built-in types:

Values passed in using the key=value syntax are interpreted as Python literal structure (strings, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans, None), alternatively as string. For example var=FALSE would create a string equal to FALSE.

If the value specified matches string True or False (starting with a capital letter) the type is set to Boolean, otherwise it is treated as string (unless it matches another type).



Variables defined through --extra_vars CLI parameter


All strings

All variables passed as extra-vars in CLI are of string type.

like image 124
techraf Avatar answered Oct 07 '22 20:10

techraf