Not all spellings of boolean "false" in inventory are interpreted as false by Jinja

[fthommen]

ISSUE TYPE

• Bug Report

COMPONENT NAME

inventory
template
jinja

ANSIBLE VERSION

ansible 2.3.0.0
  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

none special

OS / ENVIRONMENT

CentOS 7 on x86_64

SUMMARY

Boolean variables set in the inventory are not respected by Jinjia as one would expect. According to http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/YAMLSyntax.html e.g. the boolean value false can be written "false", "False", "FALSE" or "no". But only the exact spelling "False" is seen as false by Jinjia, all other spellings are seen as true value.

This is similar to and maybe related to (or the same problem as) #25778.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - shell: "echo \"The switch is {% if switch %}ON{% else %}OFF{% endif %} ({{ switch }})\""
    register: echo

  - debug:
      var: echo

set "switch" to various values in the inventory.

EXPECTED RESULTS

switch=False: The switch is OFF (False)
switch=FALSE: The switch is OFF (FALSE)
switch=false: The switch is OFF (false)
switch=no: The switch is OFF (no)
switch=0: The switch is OFF (0)
switch=true: The switch is ON (true)
switch=blah: (not sure what to expect here, probably an error message)

ACTUAL RESULTS

echo results:

switch=False: The switch is OFF (False)
switch=FALSE: The switch is ON (FALSE)
switch=false: The switch is ON (false)
switch=no: The switch is ON (no)
switch=0: The switch is OFF (0)
switch=true: The switch is ON (true)
switch=blah: The switch is ON (blah)

[pilou-]

@fthommen could you specify how you set switch value in the inventory (paste inventory content and filename) ?

I am not able to reproduce this issue defining the switch variable in an YAML file:

$ cat switch.yml
---
switch: FALSE

$ ansible-playbook -i localhost -e@switch.yml test.yml
[...]
"cmd": "echo \"The switch is OFF (False)\"",
[...]

[fthommen]

I do it in the ansible inventory with switch=FALSE (http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_inventory.html#host-variables)

[pilou-]

See 25778:

Variables which are not behavioral inventory parameters and are defined in an INI-like inventory are interpreted as strings. This doesn't seem documented, there is an hint in the note here.

[fthommen]

Thanks @pilou- . Very pity and IMHO somehow inconsistent. In this case - since that seems to be a design decision - please make this issue a documentation issue, not a bug report.

[fthommen]

btw I then still wonder, why "False" is interpreted as a boolean.... I can't find the notion of a boolean type in the Jinja documentation at all

[bcoca]

You need to specify type on 'consumption' we try to conserve it but both jinja2 and the ini format 'stringify everything'.

This should give you more predictable results:
- shell: "echo \"The switch is {% if switch|bool %}ON{% else %}OFF{% endif %} ({{ switch }})\""

[pilou-]

@fthommen INI parser tries ast.literal_eval for every value and 'stringify' when literal_eval fails.

[bcoca]

^ note that ast evals use 'python booleans' unlike jinja2 and yaml which use an extensive list.