Change request: Remove unnecessary arrays in inventory host vars

[DouglasHeriot]

ISSUE TYPE

• Feature Idea

SUMMARY

I want to echo the comment by @Yannis100
ansible/ansible#60642 (comment)

I was wondering why values in vars like config_context, sites, manufacturers and so on, were contained in [] brackets; they can have only 1 value and we have to add [0] every time we want to access them. I know that changing this means a lot of people will have to adapt their templates/playbooks but I don't get why it was done like this in the first place.

I guess it just has to do with how group_extractors have 2 separate purposes - not just populating groups, but also filling in host variables. The caller add_host_to_groups assumes extractors always output an array - but wouldn't be hard to change that.

It would also be nice to rename the host variables to be singular instead of plural as necessary - eg. "platform" instead of "platforms". There is no way in the Netbox database for there to be more than one platform of a device.

I plan to implement a fix for this - are we happy for this to be a breaking change, or should it have an option to switch this on/off?

EXPECTED RESULTS

$ ansible-inventory --graph --vars
...
  |--SOME_DEVICE
...
  |  |--{config_context = {}}
  |  |--{device_role = 'ethernet-switch'}
  |  |--{device_type = 'ers-4850gts-pwr'}
  |  |--{manufacturer = 'extreme-networks'}
  |  |--{platform = 'boss'}
  |  |--{rack = 'SOME_RACK'}
  |  |--{site = 'SOME_SITE'}
  |  |--{tags = ['Ansible']}

ACTUAL RESULTS

$ ansible-inventory --graph --vars
...
  |--SOME_DEVICE
...
  |  |--{config_context = [{}]}
  |  |--{device_roles = ['ethernet-switch']}
  |  |--{device_types = ['ers-4850gts-pwr']}
  |  |--{manufacturers = ['extreme-networks']}
  |  |--{platforms = ['boss']}
  |  |--{racks = ['SOME_RACK']}
  |  |--{sites = ['SOME_SITE']}
  |  |--{tags = ['Ansible']}

[FragmentedPacket]

I agree with these changes as well.

I'd say this may have a greater impact so probably have a toggle for it, and then we can deprecate that option eventually.

[FragmentedPacket]

Closed via #155