How to make a dict from a list in Ansible

Question

So I have a list containing some items that I would like to format/transform to a dict.

The current list looks as followed, (dummy content)

users: 
 - John
 - John_Doe
 - Jane
 - Jane_Doe

Expected result will be something like this,

users:
- username: "John"
  fullname:
    - name: John_Doe
- username: Jane
  fullname:
    - name: Jane_Doe

I know with the use of Jinja2 you could accomplish something like this but I can't seem to figure it out for my use case. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The play below

vars:
  users: 
    - John
    - John_Doe
    - Jane
    - Jane_Doe
  users_dir: []
tasks:
  - set_fact:
      users_dir: "{{ users_dir + [{'username': users[item],
                                   'fullname': [{'name': users[item+1]}]
                                   }] }}"
    loop: "{{ range(0, users|length, 2)|list }}"
  - debug:
      var: users_dir

gives (abridged):

"users_dir": [
    {
        "fullname": [
            {
                "name": "John_Doe"
            }
        ], 
        "username": "John"
    }, 
    {
        "fullname": [
            {
                "name": "Jane_Doe"
            }
        ], 
        "username": "Jane"
    }
]

Is this what you're looking for?