Proposal ansible-playbook --list-tags parser

[sebhoss]

It would be great to have the output ansible-playbook --list-tags ... as JSON. Calling that command with two example playbooks outputs this:

$ ansible-playbook --list-tags playbook.yaml debug.yml
playbook: playbook.yaml

  play #1 (all:!this): all:!this	TAGS: [some, tag]
      TASK TAGS: [first, second, third]

  play #2 (all,!this,&that): some name here	TAGS: []
      TASK TAGS: [some, other]

  play #3 (this): this	TAGS: []
      TASK TAGS: [first, second, third]

  play #4 (that): that	TAGS: [that]
      TASK TAGS: [that]

  play #5 (this:&that): this:&that	TAGS: []
      TASK TAGS: []

playbook: debug.yml

  play #1 (all): dump all vars	TAGS: [debug]
      TASK TAGS: []

I would love to have something like the following as the parser result after calling ansible-playbook --list-tags playbook.yaml debug.yml | jc --ansible-playbook-list-tags:

[
  {
    "playbook": "playbook.yaml",
    "plays": [
      {
        "number": 1,
        "hosts": ["all", "!this"],
        "name": "all:!this",
        "tags": ["some", "tag"],
        "task_tags": ["first", "second", "third"]
      },
      {
        "number": 2,
        "hosts": ["all", "!this", "&that"],
        "name": "some name here",
        "tags": [],
        "task_tags": ["some", "other"]
      },
      {
        "number": 3,
        "hosts": ["this"],
        "name": "this",
        "tags": [],
        "task_tags": ["first", "second", "third"]
      },
      {
        "number": 4,
        "hosts": ["that"],
        "name": "that",
        "tags": ["that"],
        "task_tags": ["that"]
      },
      {
        "number": 5,
        "hosts": ["this", "&that"],
        "name": "this:&that",
        "tags": [],
        "task_tags": []
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "playbook": "debug.yml",
    "plays": [
      {
        "number": 1,
        "hosts": ["all"],
        "name": "dump all vars",
        "tags": ["debug"],
        "task_tags": []
      }
    ]
  }
]

[kellyjonbrazil]

Hi there! I'm not an expert in Ansible, but I thought you could get JSON output via the JSON callback for STDOUT? Something like:

ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_WHITELIST=json ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=json ansible-playbook ...

https://devops.stackexchange.com/questions/12213/how-do-i-make-ansible-playbook-log-its-output-in-a-machine-readable-format-like

[sebhoss]

Yeah that does not seem to be working for --list-tags. I've tried with

• ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_WHITELIST=json ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=json ...
• ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_WHITELIST=ansible.posix.json ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=ansible.posix.json ...
• ANSIBLE_CALLBACKS_ENABLED=json ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=json ...
• ANSIBLE_CALLBACKS_ENABLED=ansible.posix.json ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=ansible.posix.json ...

Additionally I've tried the following settings in ansible.cfg:

[defaults]
callbacks_enabled = json
stdout_callback = json

and the fully qualified variant as well:

[defaults]
callbacks_enabled = ansible.posix.json
stdout_callback = ansible.posix.json

Sadly none of that returns JSON output for --list-tags, however it returns JSON for just running ansible-playbook so I'm guessing that this might be a missing feature in ansible and not a problem with my local setup.

[kellyjonbrazil]

Gotcha. Could you open an issue with the Community.General project to get this supported?

https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.general/issues

This might be a quick fix on their side. If not, then it may make sense to create a jc parser for this.

[sebhoss]

Ok I've created ansible-collections/ansible.posix#485