Use the ‘combine’ filter to merge hashes in Ansible 2

One of the most often-requested features in Ansible was a way to merge hashes. This has been discussed many times on the mailing lists and on IRC and on stackoverflow, and implemented in at least five different pull requests submitted to Ansible, and who knows in how many private filter plugins.

Ansible 2 (currently in β2) finally includes a way to do this: the ‘combine’ filter. The filter documentation has examples of its use, but here's the basic idea:

{'a':1, 'b':2}|combine({'b':3})
    → {'a':1, 'b':3}
{'a':{'x':1}}|combine({'a':{'y':2}}, recursive=True)
    → {'a':{'x':1, 'y':2}}

The “hash_behaviour=merge” configuration setting offers similar (recursive-only) functionality, but it's a global setting, and not convenient to use.

The new combine filter makes it possible to build up hashes using set_fact. Note the use of default({}) to address the possibility that x is not defined.

# x → {'a': 111, 'b': 222, 'c': 333}
- set_fact:
    x: "{{ x|default({})|combine({item.0: item.1}) }}"
  with_together:
    - ['a', 'b', 'c']
    - [111, 222, 333]

Thanks to the union filter, you can do the same with lists. Combining these techniques makes it possible to build up complex data structures dynamically.

# y → [{'a':123}, {'b':456}, {'c':789}]
- set_fact:
    y: "{{ y|default([])|union([{item.0: item.1}]) }}"
  with_together:
    - ['a', 'b', 'c']
    - [111, 222, 333]