Saving a random choice string to a usable variable in ansible - variables

Question

Hoping someone can help me figure out what I feel should be a simple nested string problem. I have the following tasks to randomly choose a string, save it to a variable and print it:
tasks:
- name: Debug Section 1
debug:
msg: "{{ item }}"
with_random_choice:
- MY_CHOICE1
- MY_CHOICE2
register: choice
- name: Set result to a fact
set_fact:
THE_CHOICE: "{{ choice.results }}"
- name: Debug Section 3
debug:
msg: "{{ THE_CHOICE }}"
The results return with:
PLAY [Testing variable] **********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
TASK [Debug Section 1] ***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************ok: [localhost] => (item=MY_CHOICE1) => {
"msg": "MY_CHOICE1"
}
TASK [Set result to a fact] ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************ok: [localhost]
TASK [Debug Section 3] ***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": [
{
"ansible_loop_var": "item",
"changed": false,
"failed": false,
"item": "MY_CHOICE1",
"msg": "MY_CHOICE1"
}
]
}
PLAY RECAP ***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
localhost : ok=3 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
I would like the variable THE_CHOICE to just return the item, but I can't seem to get it to work. In the set_fact section I've tried the following:
THE_CHOICE: "{{ choice.results['item'] }}"
THE_CHOICE: "{{ choice.results.item }}"
THE_CHOICE: "{{ choice['results']['item'] }}"
All attempts result in something to the effect of this:
"The task includes an option with an undefined variable. The error was: 'list object' has no attribute 'item'
Could anybody provide some insight into what I'm missing?

Answer 1

It would be simpler to use the random filter (since Ansible 1.6):
vars:
choices:
- MY_CHOICE1
- MY_CHOICE2
tasks:
- name: Set fact random
set_fact:
THE_CHOICE: "{{ choices | random }}"
About your original playbook, choice.results is a list, containing one result for each item of the loop. In your case, it only contains one result, because the with_random_choice loop only iterates once. So, in order to access your item, you must select the first result of the list with [0]:
- name: Set result to a fact
set_fact:
THE_CHOICE: "{{ choice.results[0].item }}"