Using more advanced filters with ansible setup module

Question

I'm new to ansible, but I cant find the answer to this question which I think looks fairly simple..

In playbooks, you can get facts in ansible using example {{ ansible_eth0["ipv4"]["address"] }} or {{ ansible_eth0.ipv4.address }}.

How can I grab the same information as an information-only command using something like ansible all -m setup -a "filter=???"

As filter, I have tried both the syntaxes that you want to use in the playbooks, and some more exotic ones with combination of *.

Is this even the right way to collect data like this?

Answer 1

Sadly, this is not supported. From the online documentation:

The filter option filters only the first level subkey below ansible_facts.

As the ansible_interface fact is a first level subkey in the structure of the JSON document, the minimum you can access is something like:

# ansible localhost -m setup -a 'filter=ansible_p5p1'
localhost | success >> {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "ansible_p5p1": {
            "active": true,
            "device": "p5p1",
            "ipv4": {
                "address": "10.0.0.2",
                "netmask": "255.255.255.0",
                "network": "10.0.0.0"
            },
            "ipv6": [
                {
                    "address": "fd6c:xxxx:xxxx::2",
                    "prefix": "64",
                    "scope": "global"
                },
                {
                    "address": "fe80::xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:5a56",
                    "prefix": "64",
                    "scope": "link"
                }
           ],
            "macaddress": "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx",
            "module": "foo",
            "mtu": 1500,
            "promisc": false,
            "type": "ether"
        }
    },
    "changed": false
}

If your systems have facter or ohai installed, you can access the same information from ansible:

# ansible localhost -m setup -a 'filter=facter_ipaddress_p5p1'
localhost | success >> {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "facter_ipaddress_p5p1": "10.0.0.2"
    },
    "changed": false
}