Wrong insertion of yml object

[stncrn]

Hello, I am having troubles inserting a complete block in an xml file.

Let's consider I have this simplified XML :

<List>
    <Item id="id001">
        <Label>Demo Label</Label>
        <Active>1</Active>
    </Item>
</List>

I want to add another Item into it, as List child. So the XML should become :

<List>
    <Item id="id001">
        <Label>Demo Label</Label>
        <Active>1</Active>
    </Item>
    <Item id="id002">
        <Label>Demo 2</Label>
        <Active>0</Active>
    </Item>
</List>

So I used different web XML2YML services to convert the addtionnal XML block to a YML object, all of them giving me the same result.
My playbook task is therefore looking like this :

  - name: Config xml
    xml: 
        file: /tmp/export.xml
        xpath: /List
        add_children: 
          - Item:
              _Id: id002
              Label: "Demo 2"
              Active: "0"

But the result is not the one expected :

<List>
    <Item id="id001">
        <Label>Demo Label</Label>
        <Active>1</Active>
    </Item>
    <Item id="id002" Label="Demo 2" Active="0"></Item>
</List>

When trying to insert a "bigger" object, with several childs an sub-childs, which is what I definitely need, I get this error :
TypeError: Argument must be string or unicode.

As the blocks I need to insert have several levels of subchilds, for around 20~30 lines, I would like to avoid using add_children each time to create each child one by one.

[dagwieers]

This is what you were looking for:

  - xml:
      file: /tmp/test155.new.xml
      xpath: /List
      pretty_print: yes
      add_children:
        - Item:
            _Id: id002
            _:
              - Label: Demo 2
              - Active: "0"

You can do it like this as an easier alternative:

  - xml:
      file: /tmp/test155.new.xml
      xpath: /List
      input_type: xml
      pretty_print: yes
      add_children:
        - "<Item id='id002'><Label>Demo 2</Label><Active>0</Active></Item>"

If you are happy with the examples, please close this issue.

[dagwieers]

The xml module is upstream now (and ships with Ansible v2.4).

Please close this issue, and if needed, open a new issue at: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues

[stncrn]

Understood. Nice to see this module shipped within Ansible !

[juanvalino]

Hello,

Would be nice to include this examples in the official module documentation shipped with ansible. I reached this solution because I have the same problem and the solution seems not to be documented.

Thanks.

[dagwieers]

@juanvalino If we would include all the examples, it's like looking for the needle in the haystack :-(

If you look at the xml module integration tests, you can see what I mean.
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/tree/devel/test/integration/targets/xml/tasks
Maybe we ought to add this link to the xml module docs ?

Feel free to propose a PR with the change to the documentation you would prefer. You can click on "Edit on GitHub" to edit the documentation and make a PR. Thanks in advance !