Nested Loops in Ansible

Recently I needed to create a Nested Loop in Ansible. One of the possible issues I had to consider, was the backward compatibility with both Ansible v1 and Ansible v2. A few days after, Ansible 2.5 introduced the the loop keyword and you can read a comprehensive blog entry here: Loop: Plays in the future, items in the past.

So here are my notes on the subject:

Variables

Below is a variable yaml file for testing purposes:

vars.yml

---
  days:
  - Monday
  - Tuesday
  - Wednesday
  - Thursday
  - Friday
  - Saturday
  - Sunday
  months:
  - January
  - February
  - March
  - April
  - May
  - June
  - July
  - August
  - September
  - October
  - November
  - December

Ansible v1

Let’s start with Ansible v1:

# ansible --version

ansible 1.9.6
  configured module search path = None

Playbook

Below a very simple ansible-playbook example that supports nested loops:

---
- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: no

  vars_files:
    - vars.yml

  tasks:
   - name: "This is a simple test"
     debug:
       msg: "Day: {{ item[0] }} exist in Month: {{ item[1] }}"
     with_nested:
       - "{{ days }}"
       - "{{ months }}"

This playbook doesnt do much.
Prints a message for every day and every month.

Ansible-Playbook

Run locally the playbook by:

# ansible-playbook nested.yml -c local -l localhost -i "localhost," 

the output:

PLAY [localhost] ****************************** 

TASK: [This is a simple test] *****************
ok: [localhost] => (item=['Monday', 'January']) => {
    "item": [
        "Monday",
        "January"
    ],
    "msg": "Day: Monday exist in Month: January"
}
...
ok: [localhost] => (item=['Sunday', 'December']) => {
    "item": [
        "Sunday",
        "December"
    ],
    "msg": "Day: Sunday exist in Month: December"
}

PLAY RECAP *************************************
localhost                  : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0

Messages

There are seven (7) days and twelve (12) months, so the output must print: 7*12 = 84 messages.

Counting the messages:

# ansible-playbook nested.yml -c local -l localhost -i "localhost," | egrep -c msg

84

Time

Measuring the time it needs to pass through the nested-loop:

time ansible-playbook nested.yml -c local -l localhost -i "localhost," &> /dev/null 

real 0m0.448s
user 0m0.406s
sys  0m0.040s

0.448s nice!

Ansible v2

Running the same playbook in latest ansible:

# ansible-playbook nested.yml -c local -l localhost

seems to still work!

Compatibility issues: Resolved!

Counting the messages

# ansible-playbook nested.yml | egrep -c msg

84

Time

# time ansible-playbook nested.yml &> /dev/null 

real 0m7.396s
user 0m7.575s
sys  0m0.172s

7.396s !!!

that is 7seconds more than ansible v1.

Complex Loops

The modern way, is to use the loop keyword with the nested lookup plugin:

---
- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: no

  vars_files:
    - vars.yml

  tasks:
   - name: "This is a simple test"
     debug:
       msg: "Day: {{ item[0] }} exist in Month: {{ item[1] }}"
     loop: "{{ lookup('nested', days, month) }}"

Time

# time ansible-playbook lookup_loop.yml &> /dev/null 

real 0m7.975s
user 0m8.169s
sys  0m0.177s

7.623s