Variables expansion and child groups in inventory

[Growlert]

Hello!
Not sure if this is a bug or does not supported features.
Below is the simple inventory configuration which retrieves hosts info from service now.
2 problems here:

1. password variable not expanding (it should be retrieved from vault). Even if I set variable separately as, say, pw="my_password" and then use it as "password: {{ pw }}" it doesn't substitute too.
2. nested groups doesn't work at section "groups:". The result is group "windows_servers" containing all hosts without specified subgroups.

plugin: servicenow.itsm.now
instance:
    host: "sn_instance"
    username: "user_name"
    password: "{{ lookup('hashi_vault', 'secret=path_to_secret validate_certs=False').password }}"
columns:
  - short_description
query:
  - u_cbs: = 384cacea832562532e83cbb3500
    os: IN Windows Server 2019 Standard, Windows Server 2016 Standard, Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard, Linux - Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    install_status: = 1
    u_industrial_device: = false
compose:
    ansible_host: ip_address | regex_replace('\r\n', '')
    hostname: fqdn.lower()
    ipaddress: $(ip_address | sed -r 's/[\\r\\n]+//g')
groups:
    windows_servers:
        children:
            windows_prod_servers: used_for == "Production" and os in ("Windows Server 2019 Standard", "Windows Server 2016 Standard", "Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard")
            windows_test_servers: used_for == "Test" and os in ("Windows Server 2019 Standard", "Windows Server 2016 Standard", "Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard")
    linux_prod_servers:
        used_for == "Production" and
        "Linux" in os and
        name != "urumosrub116"
    linux_test_servers:
        used_for == "Test" and
        "Linux" in os and
        name != "urumosrub116"

How to implement this or it does not supported at all?

[uscinski]

Hello @Growlert,

I can try to answer your question about nested groups.

In the groups, only the top-level keys are considered as group names and whatever is nested below is interpreted as a string rather than a dictionary, which the Jinja2 engine evaluates to True for every host. Hence, in your example, all the hosts belong to the windows_servers group.

You may try to rewrite the inventory with compose and keyed_groups, in which you may leverage parent_group to add groups into a hierarchy, as follows:

plugin: servicenow.itsm.now
compose:
  windows_prod_servers: |
    "prod_servers" if (
      os in (
        "Windows Server 2019 Standard",
        "Windows Server 2016 Standard",
        "Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard"
      ) and (used_for | lower == "production")
    )
  windows_test_servers: |
    "windows_test_servers" if (
      os in (
        "Windows Server 2019 Standard",
        "Windows Server 2016 Standard",
        "Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard"
      ) and (used_for | lower == "test")
    )
groups:
  linux_prod_servers: used_for == "Production" and "Linux" in os and name != "urumosrub116"
  linux_test_servers: used_for == "Test" and "Linux" in os and name != "urumosrub116"
keyed_groups:
  - key: windows_prod_servers
    prefix: "windows"
    parent_group: windows_servers

  - key: windows_test_servers
    leading_separator: False
    separator: ""
    parent_group: windows_servers