Multiline var declaration in Ansible

Question

I have a very long json_query that looks like this:

resources[?involvedObject.apiVersion == `v1` && involvedObject.kind == `Pod` && involvedObject.name==`my-name`].{ firstTimestamp: firstTimestamp, lastTimestamp: lastTimestamp, count: count, reason: reason, message: message }

I am using it in set_fact:

- name: Getting events
  set_fact:
    pod_events: " {{ events | json_query(events_query) }} "
  var:
    events_query: "resources[?involvedObject.apiVersion == `v1` && involvedObject.kind == `Pod` && involvedObject.name==`my-name`].{ firstTimestamp: firstTimestamp, lastTimestamp: lastTimestamp, count: count, reason: reason, message: message }"

While this works, I'd like to break the query with some newlines for readability. I tried > as well as >- and |replace('\n',''). No matter what I did the newlines in the query always persisted, leading to a broken json_query.

There has to be a way to break it, right?

Answer 1

After some trials and errors, on which I reproduced an error to the one similar that yours, I guess:

FAILED! => {"msg": "JMESPathError in json_query filter plugin:\nBad jmespath expression: Unknown token ?:\nresources[ ?\n involvedObject.apiVersion == `v1` && \n involvedObject.kind == `Pod` && \n involvedObject.name==`my-name`\n].{ \n firstTimestamp: firstTimestamp, \n lastTimestamp: lastTimestamp, \n count: count, \n reason: reason, \n message: message \n}\n ^"}

I went back to the JMESPath documentation about filter expressions to realise that the expression is delimited by [? and ] and this is quite important because is means that the question mark ? and the opening square bracket [ cannot be separated with a new line or a even a space, otherwise you will face the error here above.

Once you have that in mind, you can do your multiline as you wish.
Here would be an example of working playbook:

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
    events:
      resources:
        - firstTimestamp: '2020-10-27 10:00:00'
          lastTimestamp: '2020-10-27 12:00:00'
          count: 1
          reason: some reason
          message: some message
          involvedObject:
            apiVersion: v1
            kind: Pod
            name: my-name

  tasks:
    - set_fact:
        pod_events: "{{ events | json_query(events_query) }}"
      vars:
        events_query: >-
          resources[?
            involvedObject.apiVersion == `v1` && 
            involvedObject.kind == `Pod` && 
            involvedObject.name==`my-name`
          ].{ 
            firstTimestamp: firstTimestamp, 
            lastTimestamp: lastTimestamp, 
            count: count, 
            reason: reason, 
            message: message 
          }

    - debug:
        var: pod_events

Yields the recap

PLAY [all] *******************************************************************************************************

TASK [set_fact] **************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [debug] *****************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
    "pod_events": [
        {
            "count": 1,
            "firstTimestamp": "2020-10-27 10:00:00",
            "lastTimestamp": "2020-10-27 12:00:00",
            "message": "some message",
            "reason": "some reason"
        }
    ]
}

PLAY RECAP *******************************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0