How specify a list value as variable in ansible inventory file?

I need something like (ansible inventory file):

[example]
127.0.0.1 timezone="Europe/Amsterdam" locales="en_US","nl_NL"

However, ansible does not recognize 'locales' as a list.

You can pass a list or object like this:

[example]
127.0.0.1 timezone="Europe/Amsterdam" locales='["en_US", "nl_NL"]'

With complex variables, it's best to define them in a host_vars file rather than in the inventory file, since host_vars files support YAML syntax.

Try creating a host_vars/127.0.0.1 file with the following content:

timezone: Europe/Amsterdam
locales:
    - en_US
    - nl_NL

Ryler's answer is good in this specific case but I ran into problems using other variations with the template module.

[example]
127.0.0.1 timezone="Europe/Amsterdam" locales='["en_US", "nl_NL"]'

Is his original example and works fine.

The following variations work with template. Basically if it's a string you must remember to use the internal double quotes or the entire structure is parsed as a single string. If it's only numbers or "True" or "False" (not "yes") then you're fine. In this variation I couldn't make it work with template if it had external quotes.

I haven't done an exhaustive check of which internal use cases they do and do not break other than the template module.

I am using Ansible 2.2.1.

[example:vars]
# these work
myvar1=["foo", "bar"]
myvar2=[1,2]
myvar3=[True,False]

# These fail, they get interpreted as a single string.
myvar4=[yes, no]
myvar5=[foo,bar]
myvar6='["foo", "bar"]'

you can try split

#inventory file
[example]
127.0.0.1 timezone="Europe/Amsterdam" locales="en_US","nl_NL"

#role file
---
- debug: msg="{{ item }}"
  with_items: locales.split(',')

I believe the case is where you define your variable.

if it is under a

[host:vars] var=["a", "b"]

otherwise:

[hosts] host1 var='["a", "b"]'

INI file with variables looks like this

$ cat ./vars/vars.yml

lvol_names=['2g-1','2g-2','2g-3']

the variable represents the list type

 lvol_names:
       - 2g-1
       - 2g-2
       - 2g-3

the variable can be read from a playbook via lookup:

$ cat ./play.yml

- name: play1
  hosts: kub2_data_nodes
  become: yes


  vars:
 
     - lvol_names: "{{ lookup('ini', 'lvol_names type=properties file=./vars/vars.yml') }}"
     

You can custom a filter, to split string to list

Github ansible example show how to create custom filter.