Ansible: filter a list by its attributes

To filter a list of dicts you can use the selectattr filter together with the equalto test:

network.addresses.private_man | selectattr("type", "equalto", "fixed")

The above requires Jinja2 v2.8 or later (regardless of Ansible version).

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Ansible also has the tests match and search, which take regular expressions:

match will require a complete match in the string, while search will require a match inside of the string.

network.addresses.private_man | selectattr("type", "match", "^fixed$")

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To reduce the list of dicts to a list of strings, so you only get a list of the addr fields, you can use the map filter:

... | map(attribute='addr') | list

Or if you want a comma separated string:

... | map(attribute='addr') | join(',')

Combined, it would look like this.

- debug: msg={{ network.addresses.private_man | selectattr("type", "equalto", "fixed") | map(attribute='addr') | join(',') }}

Not necessarily better, but since it's nice to have options here's how to do it using Jinja statements:

- debug:
    msg: "{% for address in network.addresses.private_man %}\
        {% if address.type == 'fixed' %}\
          {{ address.addr }}\
        {% endif %}\
      {% endfor %}"

Or if you prefer to put it all on one line:

- debug:
    msg: "{% for address in network.addresses.private_man if address.type == 'fixed' %}{{ address.addr }}{% endfor %}"

Which returns:

ok: [localhost] => {
    "msg": "172.16.1.100"
}

I've submitted a pull request (available in Ansible 2.2+) that will make this kinds of situations easier by adding jmespath query support on Ansible. In your case it would work like:

- debug: msg="{{ addresses | json_query(\"private_man[?type=='fixed'].addr\") }}"

would return:

ok: [localhost] => {
    "msg": [
        "172.16.1.100"
    ]
}