with_subelements when subelement is a dictionary - list

Question

Say I have the following dict defined in my yml
st1:
d1:
f1: fv1
f2: fv2
d:
df1: dfv1
df2: dfv2
d2:
f1: fv3
f2: fv4
d:
df1: dfv3
df2: dfv4
I was able to iterate over the above using with_subelements. like this
with_subelements:
- st1
- d
But I get the following error when I run the playbook.
FAILED! => {"msg": "the key d should point to a list, got '{u'df1':
u'dfv1', u'df2': u'dfv2'}'"}
I am using ansible version 2.4
how can I take only values of dict d into a list to get success with the above playbook.
dictsort or dict2items didn't work for me

Answer 1

It's unfortunate that you are stuck with a bad design. Bad designs result in bad code. So here's some bad code:
---
- hosts: localhost
become: no
connection: local
tasks:
- set_fact:
st1_json: "{{ st1 | to_json }}"
- shell: echo '{{ st1_json }}' | jq '.[].d' | grep ':' | cut -d'"' -f4 | tr '\n' ',' | sed -e 's/^/[/' -e 's/,$/]/' -e 's/,/, /g'
register: output
- debug:
msg: "{{ output.stdout }}"
Pretty hideous. But it gets the desired output:
TASK [debug] ************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": "[dfv3, dfv4, dfv1, dfv2]"
}
Enjoy.

Answer 2

OK -- I'm not entirely sure what you want for output, but....
I first restructured the yaml file:
---
st1:
- name: d1
f1: fv1
f2: fv2
d:
- df1: dfv1
- df2: dfv2
- name: d2
f1: fv3
f2: fv4
d:
- df1: dfv3
- df2: dfv4
Then, the play looks like this:
- debug:
var: item.1
with_subelements:
- "{{ st1 }}"
- d
The output, then, looks like this:
TASK [debug] **********************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => (item=None) => {
"item.1": {
"df1": "dfv1"
}
}
ok: [localhost] => (item=None) => {
"item.1": {
"df2": "dfv2"
}
}
ok: [localhost] => (item=None) => {
"item.1": {
"df1": "dfv3"
}
}
ok: [localhost] => (item=None) => {
"item.1": {
"df2": "dfv4"
}
}

Answer 3

It would help if you give us some expected output. However, you need lists to use with_subelements. If you cannot change the data file, you have to change the playbook. If you want to see all the df1 values, then this will do it:
- debug:
msg: "{{ item.key }}: {{ item.value.d.df1 }}"
with_dict: "{{ st1 }}"
Using your dictionary file, I got this:
TASK [debug] **********************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => (item=None) => {
"msg": "d2: dfv3"
}
ok: [localhost] => (item=None) => {
"msg": "d1: dfv1"
}