how to build an ansible inventory

Question

I need some structure in ansible inventory to do something like this:

I have multiple addresses (with different items) and every address has multiple queues (with different items) how can I build the inventory file for this.

something like this:

addresses:
  - name: "a-address"
    type: "anycast"
    read_username: "read"
    read_password: "xxxxx"
    write_username: "write"
    write_password: "xxxx"
    - queue_name: "a-queue1"
      queue_type: xxxx
    - queue_name: "a_queue2"
      queue_type: xvx
  - name: "b-address"
    type: "multicast"
    read_username: "readb"
    read_password: "xxxxx"
    write_username: "writeb"
    write_password: "xxxx"
    - queue_name: "b-queue1"
      queue_type: xvx
    - queue_name: "b_que

How can I do this and how should I walk through this in ansible?

Answer 1

Q: "How can I build the inventory file?"

A: This is the YAML version of the inventory. I've added the variable queues to make it a valid YAML

shell> cat hosts.yml
all:
  hosts:
    a-address:
      type: anycast
      read_username: read
      read_password: xxxxx
      write_username: write
      write_password: xxxx
      queues:
        - queue_name: a-queue1
          queue_type: xxxx
        - queue_name: a_queue2
          queue_type: xvx
    b-address:
      type: multicast
      read_username: readb
      read_password: xxxxx
      write_username: writeb
      write_password: xxxx
      queues:
        - queue_name: b-queue1
          queue_type: xxxx
        - queue_name: b_queue2
          queue_type: xvx

For example, the playbook

- hosts: all
  tasks:
    - debug:
        var: type

gives (abridged)

ok: [a-address] => 
  type: anycast
ok: [b-address] => 
  type: multicast

---

Q: "Loop over addresses and within that loop a loop over the queues."

A: The playbook below

- hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - include_vars: hosts.yml
    - debug:
        msg: "{{ item.0.key }} {{ item.1 }}"
      with_subelements:
        - "{{ all.hosts|dict2items }}"
        - value.queues

gives(abridged)

msg: 'a-address {''queue_name'': ''a-queue1'', ''queue_type'': ''xxxx''}'
msg: 'a-address {''queue_name'': ''a_queue2'', ''queue_type'': ''xvx''}'
msg: 'b-address {''queue_name'': ''b-queue1'', ''queue_type'': ''xxxx''}'
msg: 'b-address {''queue_name'': ''b_queue2'', ''queue_type'': ''xvx''}'