formatting json tags in ansible between aws commands

I need to replace my EBS volumes but need to keep the tags. I have to use aws cli.- I basically have problem to feed the tag information from one aws command output to the other aws command input due to differences of expected format.

I first loop through the volumes with describe-volumes command and collect the tags for each volumes. Something like this

- name: Tags of my EBS volumes
  become: yes
  shell: |
    aws ec2 describe-volumes --volume-ids {{ item.stdout }} --query "Volumes[*].Tags" --output json 
  with_items: "{{ ebsvolumeids.results }}"
  register: ebsvolumetags

This will give a similar formatted output:

    "stdout": "[\n    [\n        {\n            \"Key\": \"cost-center\",\n            \"Value\": \"22222223222\"\n        },\n        {\n            \"Key\": \"LastBackup\",\n            \"Value\": \"2022.01.01\"\n        }\n    ]\n]",

When I want to create a new replacement volume from a snapshot and want to apply the tags the command would like this:

  shell:
    aws ec2 create-volume --snapshot-id <snap-xxxxxxxx> \
    --volume-type gp2 --tag-specifications \
    'ResourceType=volume,Tags={{ item.stdout }}'
  with_items: "{{ ebsvolumetags.results }}"

where I would loop through the output of the previous command. However create-volume command expects a format for Tags like this:

[{Key=LastBackup,Value=2022.01.01},{Key=cost-center,Value=22222223222}]

So for example the correct syntax would be:

aws ec2 create-volume --snapshot-id <snap-xxxxxxxx> --volume-type gp2 --tag-specifications \
'ResourceType=volume,Tags=[{Key=LastBackup,Value=2022.01.01},{Key=cost-center,Value=22222223222}]'

No double quotes. No colons just equal signs. One less deep structure because output had too many [] brackets.

I tried to shape the output of the first command with different ways, for the second to accept but no luck:

chain of replace filters
using of from_json on the stdout but still didn't like it
have the output as text and replacing \n and \t

Anybody has an idea how to achieve this? Thanks

Solution

Ansible shell module should only be used as a last resort. That being said, It appears this is a data formatting issue as "Tags" cannot be passed as json to the command "aws ec2 create-volume".

A workaround would be to convert the tags from json to the correct format (which follows the pattern: [{Key=key1,Value=value1},{Key=key2,Value=value2},{Key=key3,Value=value3},...]) and pass it as a string literal to the aws command. Please refer to the playbook below:

---
    - hosts: localhost
      gather_facts: no
      vars:
        tags: ''
      tasks:
      - name: Tags of my EBS volumes
        become: yes
        shell: |
           aws ec2 describe-volumes --volume-ids {{ item.stdout }} --query "Volumes[*].Tags" \
           --output json
        register: ebsvolumetags

      - name: Create tags variable
        set_fact:
          tags: "{{ tags + '{Key=' + item.Key + ',' + 'Value=' + item.Value + '},' }}"
        loop: "{{ ebsvolumetags.stdout | from_json | first }}"

      - name: Create EBS volume with the same tags
        become: yes
        shell: |
             aws ec2 create-volume --snapshot-id <snap-xxxxxxx> --volume-type gp2 \
             --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=volume,Tags=[{{ tags[:-1] }}]' \
             --availability-zone <us-east-xx>