How to know in which task an ansible play failed when launched using AWX API? - error-handling

Question

I intend to launch ansible jobs on AWX using AWX api and get a call back from the ansible playbook to be informed about the result of the play.
To do so I'm using the /api/v2/job_templates/<job-template-id>/launch/ with some extra_vars in the body to pass parameters to my play.
{
"extra_vars": {
"target": "w.x.y.z", (put here a real IP)
"directory_name_1": "dir1",
"directory_name_2": "dir2",
"file_name": "file1" (or "subdir/file1" to make it fails)
}
}
I've also configured a webhook notification in the job-template with the default customization: {{ job_metadata }}
I've put here the play I'm using which is super simple, it creates 2 directories and one file in the first directory.
- hosts: "{{ target }}"
name: fbplay
tasks:
- name: Create dummy directory 1
file:
path: "{{directory_name_1}}"
state: directory
- name: Create dummy directory 2
file:
path: "{{directory_name_2}}"
state: directory
- name: Create dummy file in directory
file:
path: "{{directory_name_1}}/{{file_name}}"
state: touch
mode: u=rw,g=r,o=r
All of this work great and in case of error 4 tasks will be executed on the target machine:
TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************
TASK [Create dummy directory 1] ************************************************
TASK [Create dummy directory 2] ************************************************
TASK [Create dummy file in directory] ******************************************
...but here is my question with regard to error handling: How can I indicate in the call back which task failed in case of error ?
In fact I can know if the play failed or not getting, in case of success:
"hosts": {
"w.x.y.z": {
"failed": false,
"changed": 1,
"dark": 0,
"failures": 0,
"ok": 4,
"processed": 1,
"skipped": 0,
"rescued": 0,
"ignored": 0
}
}
and in case of failure:
"hosts": {
"w.x.y.z": {
"failed": true,
"changed": 0,
"dark": 0,
"failures": 1,
"ok": 3,
"processed": 1,
"skipped": 0,
"rescued": 0,
"ignored": 0
}
}
But I cannot get the exact task that failed (in this case the last one by passing a filename containing a sub-directory that does not exist for example).
I'm a newbie on AWX & ansible and I'm fighting with what I thought would be a relatively simple point... so any hints or ideas is welcome.
Thx beforehand.

Answer 1

in case it helps someone, I actually confirm that ARA does what I was looking for above which is to display if using its web client (or provide through an API) exactly which task failed in each playbook you ran.

Answer 2

ARA does an excellent job for analyzing awx-runs, but it has to be set up on the AWX-server (the host running the AWX instance), if I understand correctly.
A workaroud would be to use the awx commandline interface ( see https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-tower/latest/html/towercli/index.html and * ):
watch --color 'awx --conf.host https://awx.site --conf.username my.user --conf.password "my_super_secret" -k -f human job_events list --job 3232445 --event "runner_on_failed" --filter "stdout"'
One could also sroll the API for different "?event=runner_on_failed", like:
https://your.awx.site/api/v2/jobs/3232445/job_events/?event=runner_on_failed
Or other "filters" like:
awx --conf.host https://awx.site --conf.username my.user --conf.password "my_supersecret" -k -f human job_events list --job 3232445 --event "runner_on_unreachable" --filter "*" >/tmp/tmp
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-tower/latest/html/towercli/output.html#human-readable-tabular-formatting
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-tower/latest/html/towercli/reference.html#awx-job-events-list
* (not to confuse with awx-cli/tower-cli - I think they are different)