gistfile1.txt

Hi,

We've run into an issue (and a pattern really) using ansible that we've been unable to solve and I'm hoping the list can teach us the "ansible way".

The background is that we want to create a number of monitors automatically, based on certain information.  The solution we have today is a variable:

monitor_exchanges:
- name: exchange1
  demand_partners:
    - 'dp1'
    - 'dp2'
    
And the consumer:

- name: Create datadog monitors
  datadog_monitor:
    state: "present"
    type: "query alert"
    name: '{{item.0.name}}-{{item.1}} over delivery'
    query: "avg({{monitor_interval}}):100*(avg:requests.outbound.transmitted.count{sp_name:{{item.0.name}}, dp_name:{{item.1}}} - avg:demand_partner.rps{sp_name:{{item.0.name}}, dp_name:{{item.1}}})/avg:demand_partner.rps{sp_name:{{item.0.name}}, dp_name:{{item.1}}} > {{monitor_threshold}}"
    message: "test"
    api_key: "{{datadog_api_key}}"
    app_key: "{{datadog_app_key}}"
  with_subelements:
    - monitor_exchanges
    - demand_partners
  when: monitor_exchanges is defined
  
This then creates, for each exchange a monitor per demand partner.  That part is fairly easy and works fine but we wanted to externalize the 'query'/'name'/'message' part of the above thing, so that we'd have something more like:

- name: Create monitors
datadog_monitor:
  state: "present"
  type: "query alert"
  query: {{item.something.query}}
  name: {{item.something.query}}
  message: {{item.something.query}}
  
We kept trying to do this with two datastructures, the one from above and then
something like "monitors" that would be a list of hashes containing each monitor to create.  I couldn't come up with the right combination of iteration to make it work however, because I really needed to iterate over two separate things in
different ways, I couldn't just list the two structures, I needed to do something more like:

with_nested:
  - with_subelements:
    - monitor_exchanges
    - demand_partners
  - monitors
  
Is there another way I can model this that makes sense?  I really just want to iterate over a list of monitors and then for each monitor iterate over the `monitor_exchanges` list to pull all the appropriate data.