How to escape colon character in json query using ansible

Question

Running ec2_instance_facts Ansible module and registering it to a variable called ec2.

I have tags on ec2 instance which has colon characters in its key name.

I can grab environment tag value using this:

 set_fact:
    number_of_nodes: "{{ ec2.instances|json_query('[*].tags.environment') }}"

But cannot grab value of "aws:lc:sg", trying the following:

 set_fact:
    number_of_nodes: "{{ ec2.instances|json_query('[*].tags.aws:lc:sg') }}"

Also tried by putting \, \ , /, // characters before colon. Doesn't work.

Can someone help ? :(

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 15 '19 at 08:25

3

When wanting to escape ? : - the ansible docs recommend quoting them with double-quotes ". (docs here In your case that's rather difficult as you should be using single quotes in the json_query filter. You can try replacing the arguments of that filter with a var and later when you declare that var, you can use double-quotes.

 set_fact:
    number_of_nodes: "{{ ec2.instances|json_query(the_var) }}"
 vars:
    the_var: "[*].tags.aws:lc:sg"

I hope this helps! Cheers!

answered Mar 15 '19 at 08:25

Alex D.

98
7

2

thank you so much. adding single quote outside and double quote inside worked for me. ' the_var: [*]."tags.aws:lc:sg" ' – sherri Mar 15 '19 at 08:50
Glad to hear it! – Alex D. Mar 15 '19 at 08:54
Would be nice if you could edit the answer, as it doesn't work as in described in it, but only as in @sherri s comment – Kutzi May 06 '21 at 08:21

How to escape colon character in json query using ansible

1 Answers1