Ansible template adds 'u' to array in template

Question

I have the following vars inside of my ansible playbook I got the following structure

domains:
  - { main: 'local1.com', sans: ['test.local1.com', 'test2.local.com'] }
  - { main: 'local3.com' }
  - { main: 'local4.com' }

And have the following inside of the my conf.j2

{% for domain in domains %}
  [[acme.domains]]

    {% for key, value in domain.iteritems() %}
      {% if value is string %}
        {{ key }} = "{{ value }}"
      {% else %}
        {{ key }} = {{ value }}
      {% endif %}
    {% endfor %}
{% endfor %}

Now when I go in the VM and see the file I get the following:

Output

[[acme.domains]]
  main = "local1.com
  sans = [u'test.local1.com', u'test2.local.com']
[[acme.domains]]
  main = "local3.com"
[[acme.domains]]
  main = "local4.com"

Notice the u inside of the sans array.

Excpeted output

[[acme.domains]]
  main = "local1.com"
  sans = ["test.local1.com", "test2.local.com"]
[[acme.domains]]
  main = "local3.com"
[[acme.domains]]
  main = "local4.com"

Why is this happening and how can I fix it?

Nationality

I ended up dumping the variable to json, and it fixed it (for jinja2). https://mcmap.net/q/667180/-json-is-appearing-as-unicode-entities-in-jinja2-template – Christenson

Answer 1

You get u' ' because you print the object containing the Unicode strings and this is how Python renders it by default.

You can filter it with list | join filters:

{% for domain in domains %}
[[acme.domains]]
{% for key, value in domain.iteritems() %}
{% if value is string %}
  {{ key }} = "{{ value }}"
{% else %}
  {{ key }} = ["{{ value | list | join ('\',\'') }}"]
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{% endfor %}

Or you can rely on the fact, that the string output after sans = is a JSON and render it with to_json filter:

{{ key }} = {{ value | to_json }}

Either will get you:

[[acme.domains]]
  main = "local1.com"
  sans = ["test.local1.com", "test2.local.com"]
[[acme.domains]]
  main = "local3.com"
[[acme.domains]]
  main = "local4.com"

But the first one is more versatile.

Simmie

Heads up: Actually it's tojson and not to_json. See: jinja.pocoo.org/docs/2.10/templates/#tojson – Ity

Ansible provides to_json filter and that's what I meant to use. – Simmie