I have a list

  - name: List
    set_fact:
      array1: 
        - param1: "efg"
          param2: "abdc"
          param3: "nsdadsd"
          param4: "dadas dsadasda"

which looks like:

        "array1": [
            {
                "param1": "efg",
                "param2": "abdc",
                "param3": "nsdadsd",
                "param4": "dadas dsadasda"
            }
        ]

Which I want to to send in a body of the following API call

  - name: API call
    delegate_to: localhost
    uri:
      url: https://some_url/abcd/
      validate_certs: false
      method: POST
      body_format: json
      headers:
        X-some-APIKey: "{{api_token}}"
      body: 
            '{ 
              "{{array1}}"
            }'
    register: api_output

For this I get an error:

"msg": "Unable to pass options to module, they must be JSON serializable: Object of type 'set' is not JSON serializable"

I found on internet that the problem could be that it's not a string that is passed but a "set" and one of the answers was to convert it to a string, so I tried this

  - name: array2 
    set_fact:
      array2: "{{array1 | string }}"

Also tried different variations with quotes, either ' or " for the values and even parameters, but nothing helped.

Update:

Let me add that just for the test I changed the array to be just with one item, and still getting "serializable" error. So I'm thinking maybe it's not the array which is a problem, but syntax for calling this variable from an API?

  - name: array
    set_fact:
      array1: 
        - abdcdef

SOLUTION: Update no2.

Problem was with two things. First there was Content-Type: "application/json" missing from API call. Second was that this API web service does not accept arrays.

CodePudding user response：

You are creating an invalid json, in your example you're trying to create a structure similar to

{
  [
    {
      "param1": "efg",
      "param2": "abdc",
      "param3": "nsdadsd",
      "param4": "dadas dsadasda"
     }
   ]
}

which is invalid, since {} implies name/value pair, see https://www.json.org/json-en.html

Ansible has a to_json filter, which helps converting vars to a valid json, so creating a correct fact and then converting it to json sounds like a good idea.

If your api accepts arrays, the following playbook should work:

- hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - name: List
      set_fact:
        list1:
          - param1: "efg"
            param2: "abdc"
            param3: "nsdadsd"
            param4: "dadas dsadasda"

    - name: API call
      delegate_to: localhost
      uri:
        url: http://localhost:8080
        method: POST
        body_format: json
        body: "{{list1 | to_json }}"
      register: api_output

Tested with awesome https://hub.docker.com/r/mendhak/http-https-echo image, which echoes http requests, using podman run -p 8080:8080 --rm -t mendhak/http-https-echo:24, output contains:

{
    "path": "/",
    "headers": {
        "accept-encoding": "identity",
        "content-length": "86",
        "host": "localhost:8080",
        "user-agent": "ansible-httpget",
        "content-type": "application/json",
        "connection": "close"
    },
    "method": "POST",
    "body": "[{\"param1\": \"efg\", \"param2\": \"abdc\", \"param3\": \"nsdadsd\", \"param4\": \"dadas dsadasda\"}]",
    "fresh": false,
    "hostname": "localhost",
    "ip": "::ffff:10.0.2.100",
    "ips": [],
    "protocol": "http",
    "query": {},
    "subdomains": [],
    "xhr": false,
    "os": {
        "hostname": "40f1fcddf57d"
    },
    "connection": {},
    "json": [
        {
            "param1": "efg",
            "param2": "abdc",
            "param3": "nsdadsd",
            "param4": "dadas dsadasda"
        }
    ]
}

Update:

With info from comments, it seems that array is not required, then fact setting task should be converted to

    - name: List
      set_fact:
        list1:
          param1: "efg"
          param2: "abdc"
          param3: "nsdadsd"
          param4: "dadas dsadasda"

however, to not to confuse futher readers of your code, list should be renamed to dict in both task name and fact name