Ansible Warning "type list in a string field was converted to type string"

user_10615529 0
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I have a task that add Gnome favorites for each user:

users:
  - name: username
    email: email@server.com
    favorites: "'pk1.desktop', 'pk2.desktop', 'pk3.desktop', pk4.desktop'"

- name: "[DCONF] Add favorites"
  dconf:
    key: /org/gnome/shell/favorite-apps
    value: "[{{ item.favorites }}]"
    state: present
  become: yes
  become_user: "{{ item.name }}"
  with_items: "{{ users }}"

I get this error:

[WARNING]: The value ['pk1.desktop', 'pk2.desktop', 'pk3.desktop', pk4.desktop'] (type list) in a string field was converted to u"['pk1.desktop', 'pk2.desktop', 'pk3.desktop', pk4.desktop']" (type string). If this does
not look like what you expect, quote the entire value to ensure it does not change.

How could I fix that?

Also, how could I transform this so that it looks like this: 

users:
  - name: username
    email: email@server.com
    favorites: 
      - 'pk1.desktop'
      - 'pk2.desktop'
      - 'pk3.desktop'
      - 'pk4.desktop'

the reason being that I have a lot of those favorites, so that would be easier for me to handle like this, and also because I want to learn how to do that ;)

ansible
1 Answers

I cannot reproduce your warning message (ansible 2.9.9). Note you have a single quote missing on the last value.

Meanwhile, since you want to transition to declaring your values in a list for simplicity, the following should allow you to do so and fix your issue all together.

---
- name: Set favs
  hosts: somehost
  remote_user: someuser

  vars:
    users:
      - name: username
        email: email@server.com
        favorites:
          - pk1.desktop
          - pk2.desktop
          - pk3.desktop
          - pk4.desktop

  tasks:
    - name: "[DCONF] Add favorites"
      dconf:
        key: /org/gnome/shell/favorite-apps
        value: "{{ item.favorites | string }}"
        state: present
      become: yes
      become_user: "{{ item.name }}"
      with_items: "{{ users }}"
user_94010960
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