Inventory Host class's `__repr__/__str__` can return None (TypeError)

[movermeyer]

ISSUE TYPE

• Bug Report

COMPONENT NAME

Ansible, inventory script

ANSIBLE VERSION

ansible 2.3.0.0
  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = Default w/o overrides
  python version = 2.7.5 (default, Nov  6 2016, 00:28:07) [GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-11)]

CONFIGURATION

No changes to ansible.cfg

OS / ENVIRONMENT

N/A

SUMMARY

Ansible's Inventory Host class's __repr__/__str__ can return None. This is not allowed in Python and raises TypeError.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

I was using the Cobbler inventory script and it created an Ansible Host object that had no hostname. This alone is unexpected (seems to be a bug in the Cobbler inventory script (#24546)), but that is not what this issue is about. While trying to debug the problem, I tried to print out the host that was having issues. However even just printing the object was causing Python to crash.

This is a result of Host object returning just self.name (which is None) from its __repr__ method. This is not allowed in Python.
And yet, the Host __init__ defaults the name to None, so this failure is actually the default case.

The simplest possible example is probably:

from ansible.inventory.host import Host
print Host()

EXPECTED RESULTS

I would expect it to print a string representation of the Host, (perhaps something like "Host:{self.name}") instead of crashing Python.

ACTUAL RESULTS

python test.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 2, in <module>
    print Host()
TypeError: __str__ returned non-string (type NoneType)

[jctanner]

@movermeyer seems like a simple fix. Would you be interested in sending a bugfix PR?

needs_info

[ansibot]

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[movermeyer]

Sorry guys. I have neither the time nor inclination to provide a PR for this.

[bcoca]

Since this is not an issue that affects our current code but the utilization of private methods by 3rd party not providing needed information to the objects, I'm going to close this issue as 'not a bug'.