_ansible_item_label changes in Ansible 2.8

The Ansible 2.8 upgrade brought a few failing Playbooks. I ran into the following error:

TASK [Demo Task] **************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"msg": "The task includes an option with an undefined variable. The error was: 'dict object' has no attribute '_ansible_item_label'\n\nThe error appears to be in '/path/to/ansible/playbook.yml': line 76, column 5, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n\n  - name: Demo Task\n    ^ here\n"}

Well, seems like another upgrade with another major change. Don’t you like that?

Ok, let’s see, what is the problem here? I’m running the following task, with a loop, and want to control the label which is printed. demos.results contains a structure with keys. In Ansible < 2.8, _ansible_item_label will just print the key which Ansible is currently looping over.

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- name: Demo Task
  debug:
  loop: "{{ demos.results }}"
  loop_control:
    loop_var: _demo
    label: "{{ _demo._ansible_item_label }}"

However _ansible_item_label is no longer available. The “new”" way to do this is:

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- name: Demo Task
  debug:
  loop: "{{ demos.results }}"
  loop_control:
    loop_var: _demo
    label: "{{ _demo._variable|default('') }}"

Know and print the key name, and also add a default in case it’s empty.

And if you want your playbook to run on both Ansible < 2.8 and Ansible >= 2.8, you need two blocks of code:

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- block:
  - name: Demo Task
    debug:
    loop: "{{ demos.results }}"
    loop_control:
      loop_var: _demo
      label: "{{ _demo._ansible_item_label }}"
    when: ansible_version.full < "2.8.0"

- block:
  - name: Demo Task
    debug:
    loop: "{{ demos.results }}"
    loop_control:
      loop_var: _demo
      label: "{{ _demo._variable|default('') }}"
    when: ansible_version.full >= "2.8.0"