Remove double curly braces or transform a string to raw string literal in Ansible

Question

I imported data in Ansible from a csv file and wanted to convert the String from csv file to a raw in Ansible.

Ansible:

parent_region: "{{ parent_region }}" ansible will interpret this as "parent_region": "1933".

Is there a way to remove the curly braces and make ansible interpret the code as "parent_region": 1933 ???

any help is appreciated!

EDIT I need the variable to be raw since parent_region field in Netbox's netbox_region only accepts raw. Here is the official documention.

Answer 1

Use 7.3.2. Single-Quoted Style. Quoting:

| the “\” and “"” characters may be freely used.

For example, given the variable

parent_region: "1933"

the tasks below

    - set_fact:
        parent_region: 'r"{{ parent_region }}"'
    - debug:
        var: parent_region
    - debug:
        msg: "{{ parent_region|type_debug }}"

give (the quotes are part of the string)

  parent_region: r"1933"
  msg: str

---

The default type in Ansible (Python3) is a Unicode string, e.g.

    - set_fact:
        parent_region: "1933"
    - debug:
        var: parent_region
    - debug:
        msg: "{{ parent_region|type_debug }}"

give (the quotes are NOT part of the string)

  parent_region: '1933'
  msg: AnsibleUnicode

---

You can create a custom filter and choose the encoding, e.g.

shell> cat filter_plugins/python_encode.py

def python_encode(s, encoding):
    return s.encode(encoding)

class FilterModule(object):
    def filters(self):
        return {
            'python_encode': python_encode,
        }

then the tasks

    - set_fact:
        parent_region: "{{ parent_region|python_encode('raw_unicode_escape') }}"
    - debug:
        var: parent_region
    - debug:
        msg: "{{ parent_region|type_debug }}"

give

  parent_region: b'1933'
  msg: str

See Python str vs unicode types.

Answer 2

You can convert the variable to an integer using the int filter:

parent_region: "{{ parent_region | int }}"