ansible-role-apache/language_features/complex_args.yml

---

# this is a bit of an advanced topic.
#
# generally Ansible likes to pass simple key=value arguments to modules.  It
# occasionally comes up though that you might want to write a module that takes
# COMPLEX arguments, like lists and dictionaries.
#
# In order for this to happen, at least right now, it should be a Python
# module, so it can leverage some common code in Ansible that makes this easy.
# If you write a non-Python module, you can still pass data across, but only
# hashes that do not contain lists or other hashes.  If you write the Python
# module, you can do anything.
#
# note that if you were to use BOTH the key=value form and the 'args' form for
# passing data in, the behaviour is currently undefined.  Ansible is working to
# standardize on returning a duplicate parameter failure in this case but
# modules which don't use the common module framework may do something
# different.

- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: no

  vars:
    complex:
      ghostbusters: [ 'egon', 'ray', 'peter', 'winston' ]
      mice: [ 'pinky', 'brain', 'larry' ]

  tasks:

    - name: this is the basic way data passing works for any module
      action: ping data='Hi Mom'

    - name: of course this can also be written like so, which is shorter
      ping: data='Hi Mom'

    - name: but what if you have a complex module that needs complicated data?
      ping:
        data:
          moo: cow
          asdf: [1,2,3,4]

    - name: can we make that cleaner? sure!
      ping:
        data: "{{ complex }}"