How to search in ansible for any variable that has a matching attribute

Question

I have a variable named myvar, which is defined as follows

- debug: var=myvar

ok: [127.0.0.1] => {
    "myvar": {
        "name": "george"
        "description": "blah blah"
    }
}

I want to search for that variable based on the name attribute. For example, I want to provide the name "george" and retrieve the upper level myvar variable.

- name: search
  set_fact:
    list_of_matched_vars: "{{ vars | json_query(query) }}"
  vars:
    query: "[?[].name=='george']"

The above returns an empty result. I need to somehow represent that I want to search for any variable name, which has the attribute "name" matching to the value "george". In fact I want to search for a list of matching values, like "george, helen", however, I guess this would be even trickier so lets take the simpler case first.

How can I search for the above myvar variable based on it's 'name' attribute?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 05 '20 at 11:24

I am not sure this is the best way, but here is how I ended up doing it

- name: search
  set_fact:
    list_of_matched_vars: "{{ vars | dict2items | selectattr('value.name', 'defined') | selectattr('value.name', 'in', list_of_names_to_search_for) | list }}"

Let me know if anyone can think of a better way of doing this.

How to search in ansible for any variable that has a matching attribute

1 Answers1