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authorAlicia Cozine <879121+acozine@users.noreply.github.com>2023-03-16 14:47:01 -0500
committerGitHub <noreply@github.com>2023-03-16 15:47:01 -0400
commit507fd1bd60f529681c96fa526ffa7835e122ddcb (patch)
tree37f7234a54d902ea6e91bc0901e445bf7625dcea
parent0a6333f7d0038372b2ac00cff3665501e3c2fd59 (diff)
downloadansible-507fd1bd60f529681c96fa526ffa7835e122ddcb.tar.gz
Document debugging conditionals (#80239)
##### SUMMARY Add a section to the docs describing how to debug conditional statements - how to get Ansible to show you whether your `when:` clause evaluates to `true` or `false`. I ran into trouble with this and couldn't find anything in the docs. Thought I'd add it. ##### ISSUE TYPE - Docs Pull Request +label: docsite_pr
-rw-r--r--docs/docsite/rst/playbook_guide/playbooks_conditionals.rst38
1 files changed, 38 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/docsite/rst/playbook_guide/playbooks_conditionals.rst b/docs/docsite/rst/playbook_guide/playbooks_conditionals.rst
index e1bf42d5cb..1de9ec39c7 100644
--- a/docs/docsite/rst/playbook_guide/playbooks_conditionals.rst
+++ b/docs/docsite/rst/playbook_guide/playbooks_conditionals.rst
@@ -464,6 +464,44 @@ For example, you can template out a configuration file that is very different be
- default.conf
mypaths: ['search_location_one/somedir/', '/opt/other_location/somedir/']
+.. _debugging_conditionals:
+
+Debugging conditionals
+======================
+
+If your conditional ``when`` statement is not behaving as you intended, you can add a ``debug`` statement to determine if the condition evaluates to ``true`` or ``false``. A common cause of unexpected behavior in conditionals is testing an integer as a string or a string as an integer. To debug a conditional statement, add the entire statement as the ``var:`` value in a ``debug`` task. Ansible then shows the test and how the statement evaluates. For example, here is a set of tasks and sample output:
+
+.. code-block:: yaml
+
+ - name: check value of return code
+ ansible.builtin.debug:
+ var: bar_status.rc
+
+ - name: check test for rc value as string
+ ansible.builtin.debug:
+ var: bar_status.rc == "127"
+
+ - name: check test for rc value as integer
+ ansible.builtin.debug:
+ var: bar_status.rc == 127
+
+.. code-block:: ansible-output
+
+ TASK [check value of return code] *********************************************************************************
+ ok: [foo-1] => {
+ "bar_status.rc": "127"
+ }
+
+ TASK [check test for rc value as string] **************************************************************************
+ ok: [foo-1] => {
+ "bar_status.rc == \"127\"": false
+ }
+
+ TASK [check test for rc value as integer] *************************************************************************
+ ok: [foo-1] => {
+ "bar_status.rc == 127": true
+ }
+
.. _commonly_used_facts:
Commonly-used facts