defined vars are empty string and not None/null

[oravirt]

This doesn't seem to work on 2.0.0.1, but it does work on 1.9.4.
Tested on Fedora 23

- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
- name: debug
  debug: msg={{ansible_port|default(22)}}

v1.9.4 output

PLAY [localhost] *************************************************************** 
TASK: [debug] ***************************************************************** 
ok: [localhost] => {
    "msg": "22"
}

v2.0.0.1 output

PLAY *****************************************************************************
TASK [debug] *******************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
   "msg": ""               <-- Default not picked up
}

First posted on mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ansible-project/4JLrQVGlxZ4

Any ideas? Am I missing something?
regards
/M

[bcoca]

no, the issue is that ansible_port is "" and not empty/None, this works:

- debug: msg="{{ansible_nonexistant|default(22)}}"

[mtsonline]

Hi together,

let me add my 2ct to this report:
I do not think the title is correct, this seems to be a far more global problem in the 2.x branch.
Any defined variable / dictionary value that is not filled (thous should be None) is "" and so the default will not be set.

most of our playbooks are broken because of that bug.

example:

mydict:
mykey:

Here the value of mykey should be "None" and substituted by the given default.
But it is "" and will not be substituted.

Hope this helps to fix it.

cheers
Martin

[bcoca]

hmm, you seem to be correct:

- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  gather_facts: false
  vars:
    testvar: !!null
  tasks:
    - name: debug
      debug: msg="{{testvar|default(22)}}"

[bcoca]

So looking at this again:

-debug: var=testvar

outputs:

"testvar": null

The issue with msg= is that jinja2 then translates nulls/nones into empty strings, for default to work it needs to 'booleanize'. The following works:

      debug: msg="{{testvar|default(22, True)}}"

outputs:

    "msg": "22"

Since it is just a question of the filter interacting with the jinja2 interpolation, I'm going to close this with the above as the solution.