Jenkins - Passing array/list to Parameterized Remote Build

Question

I am using Jenkins to remotely run an Ansible playbook via the Publish Over SSH command.

This command:

curl -k -v -X POST https://jenkins.m         


        

Answer 1

This is a bit of a guess, based on a similar problem I have seen with a choice parameter. Any documentation I have found seems to be wrong about how to handle these. It shouldn't be a list. Try passing as a string with newlines separating the items.

curl -k -v -X POST https://jenkins.myhost.com/job/Ansible_Deploy/build?token=<appToken> --user <myUser>:<userToken> --data-urlencode json='{"parameter":[{"name":"thisIsAList","value":"one\ntwo\nthree"}]}'

Let me know if this works. I'm interested to find out.

Edit: (based on comments)

Would this work:

curl -k -v -X POST https://jenkins.myhost.com/job/Ansible_Deploy/build?token=<appToken> --user <myUser>:<userToken> --data-urlencode json='{"parameter":[{"name":"thisIsAList","value":"'{\"thisIsAList\": [\"one\",\"two\",\"three\"]}'"}]}'

The nested quotes get a bit ugly. If you are using pipeline or can massage the data in a shell script first, it would probably be cleaner.

Answer 2

Since this level of nesting isn't detailed anywhere in the Jenkins or Ansible documentation I'll shed some light on the topic now that I've solved my issue.

The command:

ansible-playbook /home/<myUsr>/test/practice.yml --extra-vars "thisIsAList=$thisIsAList"

Should have declared thisIsAList to be a dictionary object. I.e.:

ansible-playbook /home/<myUsr>/test/practice.yml --extra-vars "{thisIsAList=$thisIsAList}"

Furthermore, the data in the cURL command should've been formatted differently like so:

json='{"parameter":[{"name":"thisIsAList","value":"[one,two,three]"}]}'

Note: the double-quotes are around the whole list, rather than the individual elements.

Finally, with further nested items (such as dict inside a list) you have to escape the double-quotes like so:

{"parameter":[{"name":"thisIsADictNestedInAList","value":"[{\"name\":\"numbers\",\"value\":[1s, 2s, 3s]}]"}]}

It seems, that at this level of nesting, it is no longer required to double-quote the lists; probably because the quotes one level up already lead it to be interpreted correctly.