In Ansible, is there a way to force variable values to integer?

Question

I'm trying to use ecs_taskdefinition module for Ansible (v2.0), and I think I'm stuck in the basic Ansible YAML gotcha.

As per the example for the module, if I provide integer values for cpu and memory, this works as expected:

- name: "Create task definition"
  ecs_taskdefinition:
    containers:
    - name: simple-app
      cpu: 10
      memory: 300
      essential: true
      image: "httpd:2.4"
      portMappings:
      - containerPort: 80
        hostPort: 80

Although, I would like the memory and cpu to be templatable. So that I will be able to use same container definition for different environments.

APP_ENV: "test"
test:
  containers:
    simple_app:
      memory: 1920
      cpu: 2560

- name: "Create task definition"
  ecs_taskdefinition:
    containers:
    - name: simple-app
      cpu: "{{vars.get(APP_ENV).containers.simple_app.cpu | int}}"
      memory: "{{vars.get(APP_ENV).containers.simple_app.memory | int}}"
      essential: true
      image: "httpd:2.4"
      portMappings:
      - containerPort: 80
        hostPort: 80

With above, I get error from the botocore API:

botocore.exceptions.ParamValidationError: Parameter validation failed:
Invalid type for parameter containerDefinitions[0].memory, value: 1920, type: <type 'str'>, valid types: <type 'int'>, <type 'long'>
Invalid type for parameter containerDefinitions[0].cpu, value: 2560, type: <type 'str'>, valid types: <type 'int'>, <type 'long'>

Is this fixable without having to update the Ansible module to actually try to convert these values to integers?

Answer 1

It seems to be working in Ansible version 2.1.1.0. If you can't get it to work, a possible solution is to define the variables a the top level of the dictionary and not using the int filter…

vars:
  APP_ENV: test
  simple_app_container_cpu: 2560
  simple_app_container_ram: 1920

tasks:
  - name: Create task definition
    ecs_taskdefinition:
      containers:
        - name: simple-app
          cpu: "{{simple_app_container_cpu}}"
          memory: "{{simple_app_container_ram}}"

Note: I used ram instead of memory because I like how it lines up :)