Enhancement: Added option to not prepend group names with group_by option

[FragmentedPacket]

Fixes #138

Added group_names_raw to provide the group name slug rather than prepending with the group_by option.

e.g. Before

group_by:
  - device_roles

device_roles_core-switch

e.g. After

group_by:
  - device_roles

core-switch

This also replaces any dash in the slug to an underscore since Ansible will be enforcing that moving from 2.10+. I'm open to keeping it as just returning the slug so please discuss what you guys think is the best approach.

[FragmentedPacket]

@smolz @DouglasHeriot @TawR1024 @Yannis100

Can I get feedback from y'all on this change?

[Yannis100]

Thanks for asking!
I would rather prefer an option to include prefix or not, and by default have it like before
The option to have the prefix shrinked/shortened to a specific length could be great too, it's the way I implemented it in my "enhanced" version of the inventory plugin

[DouglasHeriot]

My concern with this is that without the prefixes, all the slugs share the same namespace. However I can't think of any concrete examples where this will create an issue (ie. a manufacturer with the same name as a site)

As long as there's an option to turn it on/off I think this is ok.

I think in our usage of this we might leave the prefixes on as the verbosity helps when reading configurations to understand what's happening. And when running ansible-inventory to see what's there it is a lot clearer when sorted by all the site groups together, all the manufacturer groups together, etc.

The group names "manufacturers_apple" and "platforms_apple_ios" are a lot clearer than "apple" and "apple_ios" - I can much more easily explain to colleages where to find this thing in netbox.

Another thought - there's no reason that both sets of groups couldn't co-exist. Could help people transition, but would also increase confusion.

[ThomasADavis]

We use the group names to build up a genders file - and with the roles prefixed, that file gets ugly quite fast.

as for the '-' to '_', ansible is being stupid in my mind.. I'd like a flag to keep them not converted (we already do the ansible.cfg flag to turn off the warning)

[FragmentedPacket]

Alright. It seems like keeping the way it does it now should stay long term (forever) and adding the new option would also stick around and not replace the current method. I will also remove any data manipulation when it comes to changing from a dash to underscore as Ansible provides the config option to ignore the warnings.

@Yannis100 Do you mind providing me an example of the shortening?

[smolz]

Think this gets everyone what they want. As long as I have the option to disable the prepending of the group name I am happy.

[Yannis100]

You can find it in this branch of my fork
https://github.com/Yannis100/ansible/blob/region-group-netbox/lib/ansible/plugins/inventory/netbox.py
ansible/ansible#60124
Haven't work on ansible for a while so not sure if it's updated with upstream

[DouglasHeriot]

@Yannis100 I have to say thanks for your fork - I've been using your inventory for a little while and am now working on moving some features (the ones I need at least) into this project. I'll be doing regions next...