How to loop subelements with conditions based on string value?

Question

I am working with nested dicts and have multiple dictionary files with identical key's. The dict and task itself is working, but I need to add the following condition. Dont run the task, if the subelement's state == absent

My dict:

qualitygate:
  - qualitygate_name: QA-dev
    operators:
      - metric: coverage
        operator: CT
        error: 1
        state: present
  - qualitygate_name: Department-xyc
    operators:
      - metric: coverage
        operator: CT
        error: 10
        state: absent
      - metric: duplicated_lines
        operator: GT
        error: 5
        state: present

Using my task:

- ansible.builtin.uri:
    url: "{{ protocol }}://{{ server_fqdn }}/api/qualitygates/create_condition"
    user: "{{ token }}"
    method: POST
    body_format: form-urlencoded
    body:
        error: "{{ item.1.error }}"
        metric: "{{ item.1.metric }}"
        gateName: "{{ item.0.qualitygate_name }}"
        op: "{{ item.1.operator }}"
  loop: "{{ qualitygate | subelements('operators', 'skip_missing=True') }}"
  when: qualitygate[item]['state'] is match("present")

How can I change the filter to only match the value "present"

Answer 1

The issue here is that item in your loop is not a single value. If you perform some simple diagnostics, like this:

- loop: "{{ qualitygate | subelements('operators', 'skip_missing=True') }}"
  debug:
    msg: "{{ item }}"

You'll see that item looks like this:

[
    {
        "operators": [
            {
                "error": 1,
                "metric": "coverage",
                "operator": "CT",
                "state": "present"
            }
        ],
        "qualitygate_name": "QA-dev"
    },
    {
        "error": 1,
        "metric": "coverage",
        "operator": "CT",
        "state": "present"
    }
]

This is described in the documentation:

The ansible.builtin.subelements filter produces a product of an object and the subelement values of that object, similar to the ansible.builtin.subelements lookup. This lets you specify individual subelements to use in a template. For example, this expression:

You want to use the second value in item -- which for each iteration represents a value from one of the operators lists -- in your conditional. That gives you something like this:

- ansible.builtin.uri:
    url: "{{ protocol }}://{{ server_fqdn }}/api/qualitygates/create_condition"
    user: "{{ token }}"
    method: POST
    body_format: form-urlencoded
    body:
        error: "{{ item.1.error }}"
        metric: "{{ item.1.metric }}"
        gateName: "{{ item.0.qualitygate_name }}"
        op: "{{ item.1.operator }}"
  loop: "{{ qualitygate | subelements('operators', 'skip_missing=True') }}"
  when: item.1.state == "present"

If we wrap everything in a debug task, like this:

- debug:
    msg:
      ansible.builtin.uri:
        url: "{{ protocol }}://{{ server_fqdn }}/api/qualitygates/create_condition"
        user: "{{ token }}"
        method: POST
        body_format: form-urlencoded
        body:
          error: "{{ item.1.error }}"
          metric: "{{ item.1.metric }}"
          gateName: "{{ item.0.qualitygate_name }}"
          op: "{{ item.1.operator }}"
  loop: "{{ qualitygate | subelements('operators', 'skip_missing=True') }}"
  when: item.1.state == "present"

That gives us:

TASK [debug] **********************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => (item=[{'qualitygate_name': 'QA-dev', 'operators': [{'metric': 'coverage', 'operator': 'CT', 'error': 1, 'state': 'present'}]}, {'metric': 'coverage', 'operator': 'CT', 'error': 1, 'state': 'present'}]) => {
    "msg": {
        "ansible.builtin.uri": {
            "body": {
                "error": "1",
                "gateName": "QA-dev",
                "metric": "coverage",
                "op": "CT"
            },
            "body_format": "form-urlencoded",
            "method": "POST",
            "url": "https://www.example.com/api/qualitygates/create_condition",
            "user": "mytoken"
        }
    }
}
skipping: [localhost] => (item=[{'qualitygate_name': 'Department-xyc', 'operators': [{'metric': 'coverage', 'operator': 'CT', 'error': 10, 'state': 'absent'}, {'metric': 'duplicated_lines', 'operator': 'GT', 'error': 5, 'state': 'present'}]}, {'metric': 'coverage', 'operator': 'CT', 'error': 10, 'state': 'absent'}])
ok: [localhost] => (item=[{'qualitygate_name': 'Department-xyc', 'operators': [{'metric': 'coverage', 'operator': 'CT', 'error': 10, 'state': 'absent'}, {'metric': 'duplicated_lines', 'operator': 'GT', 'error': 5, 'state': 'present'}]}, {'metric': 'duplicated_lines', 'operator': 'GT', 'error': 5, 'state': 'present'}]) => {
    "msg": {
        "ansible.builtin.uri": {
            "body": {
                "error": "5",
                "gateName": "Department-xyc",
                "metric": "duplicated_lines",
                "op": "GT"
            },
            "body_format": "form-urlencoded",
            "method": "POST",
            "url": "https://www.example.com/api/qualitygates/create_condition",
            "user": "mytoken"
        }
    }
}

Which I think demonstrates exactly what you want.