Use lookup plugin to load icinga2_objects to support existing variables

[martin-gudmundson]

We've noticed an issue with assigning an existing list variable to the icinga2_objects property.

In our script we're running a task to generate a list of agent hosts for our master.

- name: "Generate host config for master"
  set_fact:
    icinga_hosts_for_master: |-
      [
      {% for agent in agents %}
        {
          "type": "Host",
          "file": "zones.d/main/hosts/hosts.conf",
          "name": "{{ agent.name }}",
          "imports": ["generic-host"],
          {% if "icinga_groups" in agent %}
          "groups": {{ agent.icinga_groups }},
          {% endif %}
          {% if "icinga_vars" in agent %}
          "vars": {{ agent.icinga_vars }},
          {% endif %}
        },
      {% endfor %}
      ]

Later we try to reference this variable in our masters icinga2_objects variable:

icinga2_objects:
  icingamaster.example.com:
    "{{icinga_hosts_for_master}}"

But we get the following error when running our deploy:
fatal: [icingamaster.example.com]: FAILED! => {"msg": "Unexpected templating type error occurred on ({{ tmp_objects| default([]) + vars['icinga2_objects'][icinga2_config_host] }}): can only concatenate list (not \"AnsibleUnicode\") to list"}

Editing the roles/icinga2/tasks/objects.yml file to use the lookup plugin instead resolves the issue:

- name: collect all config objects in play vars
  set_fact:
    tmp_objects: "{{ tmp_objects| default([]) + lookup('list', icinga2_objects[icinga2_config_host]) }}"
  when: vars['icinga2_objects'][icinga2_config_host] is defined

Tested it both with variables and declaring the list directly and both works as intended.

This also has an added benefit of allowing variables to be used within an object in the list.

icinga2_objects:
      icingamaster.example.com:
        - name: "icingac1.example.com"
          type: Host
          file: zones.d/main/hosts/hosts.conf
          imports:
            - generic-host
          groups:
            - linux-servers
          vars:
            test: "{{ansible_fqdn}}" # <------ Won't work in current implementation but would resolve correctly if using lookup plugin
            disks["disk /"]:
              disk_partitions: "/"

[martialblog]

Thanks for the hint, we will have a look at it

[mkayontour]

Hi @martin-gudmundson, this looks awesome! I did some tests with it and it can also replace the first variable block which looks at only the hostvars.

Would you like to contribute a pull request?

[martin-gudmundson]

Great! Sure, i'll get on it!