ansible lineinfile based on conditionals

Question

I am having the following playbook in ansible where "{{env}}" is a dynamic variable: could be sit,nft,prod,etc - based on user selection. The action in the play should be executed only if the selected environment is nft.

- hosts: "{{ host }}"
  remote_user: "{{ user }}"

  vars:
    home_dir: "/home/{{ user }}"
    env: "{{ env }}"

  tasks:
    - name: backup file
      copy:
        src: "/home/dtcd/gabi/FF_environmentConfig.ini"
        dest: "/home/dtcd/gabi/FF_environmentConfig.ini_orig"
        remote_src: yes

    - name: change params nft
      lineinfile:
        path: "/home/dtcd/gabi/FF_environmentConfig.ini"
        regexp: '{{item.From}}'
        line: '{{item.To}}'
        state: present
      with_items:
        - { From: 'FF_AMQProcessingMessageTimeoutInMilliseconds=5000', To: 'FF_AMQProcessingMessageTimeoutInMilliseconds=10000' }
        - { From: 'FF_solutionDetectionServiceProcess_FF_ALL_FF_customFeedChannel_ConcurrentThreads=1', To: 'FF_solutionDetectionServiceProcess_FF_ALL_FF_customFeedChannel_ConcurrentThreads=10' }
      when: env == nft

Now, when I am running the playbook, it errors out with the message:

fatal: [servera.com]: FAILED! => { "msg": "The conditional check 'env == nft' failed. The error was: error while evaluating conditional (env == nft): 'nft' is undefined\n\nThe error appears to be in '/ansible-playbook/1-sed.yml': line 15, column 7, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n\n - name: change params nft\n ^ here\n" }

I have tried using when: "{{env}}" == "nft", using set_facts... but in the end I am still facing the error above.

Using set_facts I was able to overcome the error, however the actions were skipped, despite env=nft.

What am I missing here?

Thanks!

Answer 1

When you write:

      when: env == nft

You are saying: "When the value of the variable env matches the value of the variable nft".

Ansible is telling you that you have no variable named nft ('nft' is undefined), which is accurate.

If you want to compare a variable to a literal string, you need to quote the string:

      when: env == "nft"